Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 15:16:38 -0600
From: TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Volume 12 Accelerated Index Now Available
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 13, Issue 1, Message 2 of 13

The Accelerated Index to TELECOM Digest Volume 12 subjects and authors
is now available in the Telecom Archives for grabbing via anonymous
ftp lcs.mit.edu.

It is called an accelerated index since it points to other large files
which contain clusters of back issues (in groups of 50) where the
subject or author will be located.

A typical entry in the index will look like this:

12/101-150: Article Title Here (First Last Name of Author Here)
12/101-150: Re: Response to Article Here (First Last Name of Author)

This would tell you to go to the sub-directory in the archives for
Volume 12, and pull the large file named 'vol12.iss101-150'. When you
have that file available to you, then use grep or other methods of
searching within that file for the desired articles and authors.
Author's names are always in (parenthesis) but sometimes were
shortened in the header (i.e. John Smith became J. Smith or J Smith)
as needed to make it fit on the line in the Digests from which the
index was created. Searching for the last name is better than the full
name since these variances could cause you to miss some entries.

The Accelerated Index is sorted in alphabetical order, with "Re:"
ignored where it appears.  You can dump it out to a printer if
desired, however the file is about 9500 lines in length. All articles
with identical names will usually have one without 'Re:' and one or
more with 'Re:' on the front. Where titles are identical (since the
'Re:' if it exists is ignored in the alphabetical sort) the sorting
then continues by *first* name of author. As an example, "Re: My Life
Story" by Adam Smith would appear before "My Life Story" by John
Higdon. 

Depending on the name of the original author, the original article
(that is, the one without 'Re:' on the front) may appear anywhere in
the cluster of identically-named articles. If you see more than one
identical titles and none of them say 'Re:', then it is likely the
'Re:' was somehow overlooked in processing -or- they are two articles
with similar material but both are 'original'.

Conversely, if you see one or more articles with 'Re:' and no
offsetting original article (the one in the bunch without 'Re:' on the
front) one of two things is possible: either there was no 'original
article', i.e. I screwed up in the original publication or the thread
started in Volume 11 and the (Re:)plies got carried over to Volume 12.

Some help is available in the use of the Accelerated Index within
the index itself:   grep -i "Intro:"  for several lines of help at the
start of the file.

A companion file covers volumes 9-10-11 from 1989 through 1991. It is
set up the same way, and is in excess of 24,000 lines. I was thinking
about merging volume 12 into the earlier index, but there were some
problems with that, namely the sorting of entries got very difficult,
and anyway, some of you already have the earlier edition. Besides,
there are simply too many small sites where a file of some 35,000
lines in total simply could not be handled.

Final note: 

If you are at a UUCP or BBS site, I strongly recommend you seek
permission from your system administrator before hauling such big
files across the wire; and make sure you have room on your spool for
the uncompressed results. 

Remember, these two index files to subject and author names are in
compressed format in the archives. (They have the suffix '.Z' after
their name.)  You must use binary mode to transfer them via ftp, or
else the results will be trashed when you try to uncompress them. 

I hope these indexes to subjects and authors in TELECOM Digest since
April, 1989 will be useful to you. It is strongly recommended you have
a good working knowledge of the 'grep -i' command and can be creative
in your use of 'grep' for searching for the best results. Let me know
how it works for you.


Patrick Townson   
TELECOM Moderator