Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!twwells!bill From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: comp.archives Subject: Welcome to comp.archives Message-ID: <115@twwells.uucp> Date: 24 Oct 88 23:13:24 GMT Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale Lines: 194 Approved: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) Hello all, The burning question, for all of you who haven't been following the discussion about comp.archives, is: what is it? :-) Comp.archives is intended to be the place you go to when you want something that you think is *somewhere* out on the network, but you don't know where it is. I also intend to have various articles on how to get to various kinds of archives. Since there is no discussion group related to this one, I will accept other kinds of postings as well. I particularly encourage people who are having problems getting to archive sites to post; after all, what good is this newsgroup if you can't use the info coming from it? I also encourage those who have answers to respond. Also, until things are stable and there are a few archive sites that archive comp.archives, postings asking for where things are archived will be accepted. Now, here is what I see as my charter: Comp.archives is the place to look to find out where freely distributable and electronically available software, databases, documents, or what have you, can be had. "Freely distributable" means that, if you have a copy of the item, you can (at least) make exact copies and give them away, and you don't have to tell the owner of the item (if any) that you have done so. "Available electronically" means, for my purposes, that it is obtainable through a publicly accessible network. Also included may be things which can be had by other means, so long as this does not involve paying a fee to the distributor. This information is provided as a free service and there is *no one* guaranteeing that any of it is accurate or useful. Use it your own risk. --- I intend that anyone who is sufficiently diligent can create for himself a database of archive information from the postings that come through comp.archives. This database has three parts. They are: 1) The archive site directory. This is a database of archive sites. Each archive site that I am posting information for will have some kind of entry here. If I were to make my site available for retrieving the current archive databases (something which I expect to do sooner or later), I'd have an entry that looked something like this: NM twwells.UUCP EN bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells); 1988 Oct 21 AD bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) MA 781 W. Oakland Pk Blvd #208, Ft. Lauderdale FL 33311 CO uucp:uucp::twwells Any1800-0800 ACU 2400 13059876543 in:-\r-in: arcuucp DE This is where comp.archives gets moderated from. I maintain the DE most up-to-date version of the databases, so if you want DE them you have to get them directly from me. 2) The information directory. I believe that, in order to easily find information in the archives, we need to have a directory that describes the things in the archives. To that end, I propose a database that contains entries something like this faked up entry for pcomm. NM unix-pcomm VR version 1.1 AU egray@fthood.UUCP (Emmet P. Gray) MA egray@fthood.UUCP (Emmet P. Gray) EN bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells); 1988 Oct 21 TT public domain version of ProComm (TM) KW all-source,public-domain,datacomm SY any:modem,sysv-unix:termcaps,install DE Pcomm is a public domain telecommunication program for Unix that DE is designed to operate similarly to the MSDOS program, ProComm. DE ProComm (TM) is copyrighted by Datastorm Technologies, Inc. This DE is a completely new program and contains no ProComm source code. DE This is not a Datastorm product. 3) The archive content directory. This ties the two previous ones together. Its entries look something like: unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.1.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 1 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.2.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 2 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.3.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 3 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.4.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 4 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.5.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 5 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.6.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 6 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.7.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 7 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.8.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;part 8 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.p1.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;patch 1 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.p2.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;patch 2 unix-pcomm;version 1.1;twwells;*;pcomm.p3.shar.Z;1988 Oct 21;compress;patch 3 Of course, many archive sites will make available things which do not have entries in the information directory. This is certainly going to be true at the start and will probably remain true indefinitely. For these, the entries would look something like: ;;twwells;*;fbackup.cpio.Z;1988 Oct 21;cpio,compress;floppy backup program What I'll do is post messages with special subject lines that indicate which part of the database is being updated by that message and take special pains to verify that these messages are properly formatted, etc. --- There you have it: my grandiose plans for comp.archives. However, before I begin, I want your input. I need to know whether what I am proposing is what you want. I need to hear from various people as to whether they will provide the information I need to make this fly. In particular I would like to hear from those who administer archive sites, those who moderate newsgroups that contain information which is archived, and those who write software that is expected to be archived. Following this posting is a detailed description of the proposed comp.archives databases. General comments should be followups to this message, comments about the specific ddatabase structure should be followups to the next. --- Here is some administrivia: there has been this rumor that I haven't yet sent in the map entry for the site from which I am posting (twwells). Well, that isn't so; here is the message I sent: >From bill Mon Oct 3 19:25:40 1988 To: novavax!map-request,uunet!rutgers!uucpmap Subject: map updates for proxftl and twwells Here are updated map entries for proxftl and twwells. #N proxftl #S Sun 3/280; Sun Unix Release 3.4 #O Proximity Technology Inc. #C Tom Holroyd #E proxftl!postmaster #T +1 305 566 3511 #P 3511 NE 22nd Ave., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33308 #L 26 11 N / 80 00 W city #R #U novavax twwells #W proxftl!tomh (Tom Holroyd); Mon Oct 3 16:58:19 EDT 1988 # proxftl novavax(DIRECT), sunvice(DIRECT), twwells(DIRECT), uunet(EVENING) #N twwells #S Zenith 386; UNIX System V/386 #O #C T. William Wells #E twwells!postmaster #T +1 305 491 8027 #P 781 W Oakland Park Blvd #208, Ft. Lauderdale FL, 33311 #L 26 11 N / 80 00 W city #R #U proxftl #W twwells!bill (T. William Wells); Mon Oct 3 16:58:19 EDT 1988 # twwells proxftl(DIRECT) These map entries are correct and assuming the various map people haven't sent this thing out and that you need this info to post, you should get them to your uucp, news, or system administrator. Suggested paths for e-mailing me are: {novavax|uunet}!proxftl!twwells!bill The address for posting is: {novavax|uunet}!proxftl!twwells!comp-archives and for comp.archive related stuff that is not to be posted: {novavax|uunet}!proxftl!twwells!comp-archives-request --- Finally, I'd like to thank John F. Haugh II, jfh@rpp386.dallas.tx.us for getting this thing rolling and collecting the votes and for miscellaneous information that has helped me get started. Hope to hear from you soon! --- Bill {uunet|novavax}!proxftl!twwells!bill