Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!eos!eugene
From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: A little announcement (part 2 of 3)
Message-ID: <1769@eos.UUCP>
Date: 20 Oct 88 05:05:31 GMT
References: <1762@eos.UUCP>
Reply-To: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.
Lines: 107

IF you can read, please direct specific mail messages to:
	siggraph@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov, NOT MY MAIL BOX!

Yesterday I described the availabilty of Singh's bibliography to
Internet sites:

%A Baldev Singh
%T Computer Graphics Literature for 1986: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 21
%N 3
%D June 1987
%P 189-208

and

%A Baldev Singh
%A Gunther Schrack
%T Computer Grap[hics Literature for 1985: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 20
%N 3
%D July 1986
%P 85-145

I described the advantages of searching and reformatting.  I described
anonymous FTP.  This is the way to go if you are a major Internet
site like most universities.  The problem is: what about more casual users,
poor people with small disks?  Well, the files reside of DEC's disk.
Just LEAVE THEM THERE.  Let Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH and Singh maintain them.
Then how do you access it?  By electronic mail.

A similar system exists at the Argonne National Labs (and AT&T Bell Labs):
netlib numerical software distribution [CACM ref. if you need it].
A similar set up for benchmarks exists at the NBS (See latest IEEE Computer).
Why not do this for graphics references?

With a generous donation of cycles and disk space from the
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and some software from CSIL at Stanford
we have done just this.

THERE ARE TWO DANGERS inherent:
The bibliography is kind of big.
The second danger is everybody copying at the same time.

The DEC host which you be copying from is DEC's gateway to the Internet.
It will be a tragedy to abuse this gateway if every site tried to copy
at once.  So let's not abuse this, let's be patient and take our turns.
1) retrive references only during the weekends or evenings Pacific Daylight
or Standard time.

2) copy on a randomly determined evening of the week.
How?  Flip a coin 3 times (say THT make Head == 0, Tails == 1,
this translates to 101 binary or 5 base 10). Using Sunday as 1,
make Thursday 5, copy Thursday evening P[SD]T.  (HHH or 000, retry).
If this is confusing, wait for the weekend. AGAIN copy only in the evenings.

Where, okay here goes the dangerous information:
	send mail to:
	graf-bib-server@decwrl.dec.com
This can also be
	{your favorite UUCP path}!decwrl!graf-bib-server
or if you work for DEC and have ENET access:
	DECWRL::graf-bib-server
Your mailer should ask for a "Subject:" field.  This is important.
If your mailer doesn't (and lots don't) ask your system folk about
mailrc file or mh_profiles or how to invoke this field.  Because you
should place the keywords in that subject field.  One special keyword
is "help."  You get a short little description.  Make the first
alphanumeric (don't give "years").  Additional keywords are conjective
(and's) causing a smaller and smaller search.  The contents aren't
perfect, but give us time.

Your mail is answered by the server daemon.  It searches and tries to find
relevant cited keywords (up to 6 significant first characters.  Choose
carefully.  Don't ask for all references with "computer graphics."
Hope you understand why.  Just try "help" as your first keyword
unless you know what you are looking for.  The information comes back
in the aforementioned (yesterday) refer format.

If you don't have a network guru, send mail to siggraph, not the poster of
this note below.  (Illiterates will type "reply" or "follow-up" to news.
Sorry, I'm very tired of this. That's why I'm doing this.)  Big thanks
are due to Brian Reid and Jamie Painter (at DEC for this work).
Rick Beach okay'ed ACM copyrights.  This is not for profit.  Please
ACK the above people and organizations (in particular, Baldev)
when citing.  As I hope you can tell, we are really trying to advance
the state of the art in computer graphics.  This should benefit
experts as well as students alike.  It also shows the use of technologies
other than graphics to our (graphics) benefit.

Our last note will concern one more way of getting references:
just asking for a floppy (low tech).
We in the Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH local group will be adding to these.
Reference contributions and corrections are welcome.  It's only possible
if we work together to see this through.

See you tomorrow.  Be certain to read and try and understand ALL directions.
It's confusing, but so is most hi-tech. 8-)

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
  ex-Lame-duck Prez. Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  {uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
  "Send mail, avoid follow-ups.  If enough, I'll summarize."