HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: smitty@dsd.es.com (Maurice Smith)
Subject: Re: Questions regarding the setting up of a WAIS system
Reply-To: smitty@dsd.es.com
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City, UT
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 15:24:46 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.125851.19972@bnr.co.uk>, row@bnr.co.uk writes:
> Hello,
> 
> I am in the process of trying to setup a experimental WAIS system
> for evaluation purposes and have a number of questions that I hope
> someone will be able to help me with. 
> 
> I am compiling and running under SunOS version 4.1.1 on an Sparcstation
> IPX running OpenWindows version 3. I am also using a Machintosh SE/30
> running System 7 (I think ?). The WAIS server is running on the SUN
> and I am using a TCP/IP connection to accesses it remotely from another
> Sun and a Machintosh (and it all seems to work).
> 
> 1) Are there any updates for WAIS to enable it to support Frame Maker
>    documents ? 
> 
	Not that I know of, however, since the FrameMaker print format is
	PostScript and the WAIS indexer supports PostScript your FrameMaker
	documents can be indexed.  Which leads to your 	question 6).

	Stuff deleted.


> 6) Is there any kind of support for viewing PostScript files from
>    Xwais using either GhostScript or PageView on a SUN ?
> 

	Yes, infact xwais supports separate views for any document type 
	supported via the .Xdefaults file.  Here is my entry:

Xwais.filters: GIF,/usr/local/xv;PS,/usr/local/ghostview

	
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> 
> Reuben O. Wells	- BNR Europe Ltd - (+44) 279 403704

-- 
======================================================================
 Maurice Smith                     |" I feel much better now that I've
 smitty@dsd.es.com  (use it!)      |  given up all hope." 
 Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. | 
 Salt Lake City, Utah              |  #include <standard_disclaimer>


Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: "Peter Marshall CCS UWO" <peter@julian.uwo.ca>
Subject: core dumps from swais options command
Cc: comp.infosystems.wais@julian.uwo.ca
Organization: Relayed-by-Sendmail
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 02:39:27 GMT
To: wais-discussion@think.com


There seems to be a pointer reference problem screen-ui.c.  When I try
the `o' (options) command on a Mips machine the program gets a Bus
Error and dies.  For some reason it all works just fine on a Sparc.
With the following patch, (a single &), the code works for both
architectures. (Also included is a change that eliminates a casting
warning that I know will bite when we try to port this code to SGI and
other unforgiving compilers.)

*** screen-ui.c.orig	Thu Aug 20 13:27:01 1992
--- screen-ui.c	Thu Aug 20 13:40:39 1992
***************
*** 975,981 ****
    sprintf(fstr,"%%03d:   %%-12.12s  %%-%d.%ds",COLS-22,COLS-22);
  
    for (k=1; k <= option_count; k++) {
!      format_option(tstr,options[k]);
       sprintf(select_line[k], fstr, k, options[k].name, tstr);
    }
  
--- 975,981 ----
    sprintf(fstr,"%%03d:   %%-12.12s  %%-%d.%ds",COLS-22,COLS-22);
  
    for (k=1; k <= option_count; k++) {
!      format_option(tstr,&options[k]);
       sprintf(select_line[k], fstr, k, options[k].name, tstr);
    }
  
***************
*** 1537,1543 ****
       if (current_doc != NULL) {
         sourcename = firstphrase(trim_junk(current_doc->doc->source));
         if (NULL != strrchr(sourcename,'/')) {
!           sourcename = strrchr(sourcename,'/');
            sourcename++;
         }
  	if (option_widetitles==TRUE) 
--- 1537,1543 ----
       if (current_doc != NULL) {
         sourcename = firstphrase(trim_junk(current_doc->doc->source));
         if (NULL != strrchr(sourcename,'/')) {
!           sourcename = (char *)strrchr(sourcename,'/');
            sourcename++;
         }
  	if (option_widetitles==TRUE) 
-- 
--
Peter Marshall, Manager (Academic Networking)
CCS, NSC, U. of Western Ontario, London, Canada N6A 5B7 (519)661-2111x6032
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: farrell@coral.cs.jcu.edu.au (John Farrell)
Subject: Re: Source changes its name
Organization: James Cook University
Date: 23 Aug 92 23:31:08 GMT

  I think I posted this to the wrong group? I am so confused! I let nn
generate the group name for me automatically.
  
>Newsgroups: comp.info-systems.wais

In <farrell.714377797@coral.cs.jcu.edu.au> farrell@coral.cs.jcu.edu.au (John Farrell) writes:
>Due to lack of disk space, my wais source "Comp-Sci-Tech-Reports" will be
>changed to "Func-Prog-Abstracts", i.e. it will be focussing on functional
>programming. I have utterly failed to interest anyone else in the Dept in
>using the source, let alone adding to it, so it will reflect my own research
>interests. Besides, there are heaps of other general comp sci sources anyway.
>I shall leave the Comp-Sci* source there for a while yet, but it will contain
>only the same stuff. I ask that the old source be removed from the various
>directories of servers so that eventually I can reclaim the disk space. The
>new version of the source follows. Note that included in the source is our
>Deptl tech report list, which I suppose I should send to comp.doc.techreports
>one day.

>John
>---
>(:source 
>   :version  3 
>   :ip-address "137.219.17.4"
>   :ip-name "coral.cs.jcu.edu.au"
>   :tcp-port 8000
>   :database-name "Func-Prog-Abstracts"
>   :cost 0.00 
>   :cost-unit :free 
>   :maintainer "farrell@coral.cs.jcu.edu.au"
>   :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b3.1 on Apr 22 19:06:25 1992 by farrell@coral.cs.jcu.edu.au

>Keywords: help intro introduction info information computer science technical
>          reports functional programming

>This is a small collection of computer science technical reports, abstracts
>and papers gathered from ftp sites etc. all over the world. Due to space
>considerations, I am limiting it to functional programming, my area of
>interest, and papers produced by the department (which may or may not be
>related to functional programming).

>Comments, problems etc to the maintainer above.
>"
>)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: chrisc@bu.oz.au (Chris Christoff)
Subject: where doc dir specified
Organization: ITS, Bond University
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 03:12:04 GMT

I am using xwais and the file Xwais in /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults
specifies the directories and file names for things like the sources and
questions.

However, can anybody tell me where the directory for saving documents is
specified ?

I tried adding Xwais*documentDirectory:	/home/.....   to the Xwais list
but this had no effect. "documentDirectory" is the correct name I think,
I did a grep documentDirectory * in wais-8-b5/x and it is defined/used
in the same way as questionDirectory and commonSourceDirectory.

Can anybody help ?


Cheers,

Chris


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris CHRISTOFF			 email: chrisc@bu.oz.au
Manager, Communications		'phone: +61 75 951424  (075) 951424
Computer Services		   fax: +61 75 951456  (075) 951456
Bond University
Gold Coast
QLD  4229  AUSTRALIA
---------------------------------------------------------------------


Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: westes@netcom.com (Will Estes)
Subject: Need Help With Waissearch
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 22:40:07 GMT
Organization: Mail Group

I compiled wais-8-b5 on one Sun system and moved it to another Sun
system.  The first system has a firewall, so I couldn't test any remote
connections.  On the second system, running this command:
	waissearch -h think.quake.com -p 210 -d directory-of-servers "poetry"
gets this error message:
	Connect to socket did not work (1): Host is unreachable

What is the source of that error message?  Is it possible that I need to
recompile on the second system in order to access some library at
run-time?

Thanks,
Will Estes		Internet: westes@netcom.com
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: sridhar@enuxhb.eas.asu.edu (Sridhar Venkataraman)
Subject: Re: database files
Organization: Arizona State University, Tempe AZ
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 14:21:28 GMT

chrisc@bu.oz.au (Chris Christoff)
writes on comp.infosystems.wais:

)When I index files for the wais server on my Sun 3/60, using waisindex I
)don't get the xxx.status file, but I do get a xxx.cat file. The xxx.doc
)file I get looks nothing like the description of the same from Brewster
)(although my xxx.cat file does somewhat match the description of his
)xxx.doc).
)What have I missed ???

I am not sure about the .doc but the .cat contains enough info to
retrieve the <thing> file you want where <thing> can be a file or a
para or a digest message etc. (depending on the type of indexing). 
It has a document no. and the byte positions of the text and the whole
pathname of the file. waisretrieve or waisq can use it straightaway to
get a document if you can guess from filenames.

It was interesting that I ran into a strange thing on this subject
when I did a search for 'sdstate' (South Dakota State Univ.) on the
usenet-addresses databases. Not a single record turned out and the
waissearch returned the catalog. And you can imagine how huge the
catalog can be. Just try 'finger'ing sdstate nodes and I wonder what
they are doing with a Internet link.

Jonathan, if you are reading this, could you please disable the .cat
creation for usenet-addresses since retrieving that file is going to 
choke the link as well as fill the disk. Thanks.

Oops, I am not sure whether it was Jonathan's server or Ed
Vielmetti's. In that case, my request goes to both of them.

)Chris

Sridhar.
From: westes@netcom.com (Will Estes)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
Subject: Re: Need Help With Waissearch
Date: 31 Aug 92 22:04:33 GMT
Organization: Mail Group

barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:

>In article <95gndqa.westes@netcom.com> westes@netcom.com (Will Estes) writes:
>>	waissearch -h think.quake.com -p 210 -d directory-of-servers "poetry"
>>gets this error message:
>>	Connect to socket did not work (1): Host is unreachable

>This is a networking problem.  Can you "ping quake.think.com" or "telnet
>quake.think.com"?

Yes, I can both ping and telnet to quake.think.com.  I successfully FTPd
WAIS info from that site.  I have a feeling that there is some firewall
or router filter at work that I don't know about.
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk (Stephen Hebditch)
Subject: Re: swais mods (b5)
Keywords: swais, curses
Organization: TQM Communications, London, UK
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 14:22:11 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.183548.27526@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> warnock@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov (Archie Warnock) writes:
>swais wants to pipe documents out to a pager (e.g., more) for display,
>but this doesn't seem to work all that well, at least on our system.
>For one thing, the last page of the document doesn't display because the
>pipe to more doesn't pause at the end of the document before returning
>to the calling program swais (which then pauses with an empty screen).
>In addition, when you try to view more than a single document, the line
>delimiters in the document seem to get lost and the text just wraps
>around on the screen (apparently, spawning out from the
>curses-controlled swais interface to a non-curses-based pager leaves the
>terminal in some odd state).

There are a number of problems with swais and curses which I found while
getting it going under SVR4.

The biggest is that it tries to initialise curses more than once in the
program, which results in the 'shell' state of the terminal being lost.
This causes the problem you mention about trying to view more than a
single document and means you have to reset the terminal with stty when
you quit the program.

It also makes the bad assumption that the screen contents will remain
once you quit the pager and re-enter the curses environment so it can
just display a message using curses asking you to press a key. This also
doesn't work as you mentioned - I ended up forcing less to be the pager
and axing all the waiting for a key code as the quickest solution.
There's also a few other 'oddities' in the code...

-- 
Stephen Hebditch  TQM Communications  steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk +44 836 825962
From: rcsmith@sed.csc.com (Ray Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
Subject: Re: Sun's search-it
Date: 29 Aug 92 15:31:17 GMT
Organization: Computer Sciences Corporation - Systems Engineering Division

riddle@is.rice.edu (Prentiss Riddle) writes:

>In article <BtpBrr.8yC@rivm.nl> ron@rivm.nl writes:
>> Did you happen to see the announcement for SUN (tm)'s Search-it. Sounds like
>> wais. Anyone who knows more details?

>I thought it sounded like WAIS, too, until I noticed that it requires
>access to a common NFS space to work.  It's really more or less a local
>area info server, not a wide area info server.

>It does have proximity searches, though.  I hope some Search-It users
>will step forward and give a report.

This isn't a report from a user (yet) but I thought I would offer y'all
some more information.  The announcement I saw said the product was based 
on Fulcrum's FUL/TEXT package. The announcement went on to say that Sun's
Answerbook is based on FUL/TEXT as well. Below is a write-up taken from a 
summary of full text retrieval packages sent out a couple of years ago.

==========================================================================
>From: lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin)
>Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted,comp.text
>Subject: Re: Litterature search/index/information retrieval program wanted
>Message-ID: <1990Jul29.035651.28483@sq.sq.com>
>Date: 29 Jul 90 03:56:51 GMT
>Organization: SoftQuad Inc.

	<<** LOTS OF OTHER COMPANIES DELETED **>>

* Fulcrum Ful/Text
  One of the fastest.  Uses a byte-index, so that every byte in the data
  is indexed (at least, that's what they told me....).  Good front end,
  and has been on Unix for at least three years.  Widely used by OEMs,
  e.g. HP for their manual, and Dallas Theological Whotsit [sorry] for
  their CD ROM of several versions of the Bible.  Can understand SGML.

  If you are looking at commercial products, 3rd Eye and Ful/Text are
  absolute, absolute musts.  Or so say I.

Ful/Text	3B, Aviion, Ultrix, HP 9000, Sun 3 & 4, 386/ix, SCO Xenix,
		VMS, DOS...
  Fulcrum Technologies
  560 Rochester Street,
  Ottawa,
  Ontario K1S 5K2
  Canada
-- 
Ray Smith                                  Computer Sciences Corporation
One of these should work: rcsmith@sed.csc.com   - or -
uunet!anagld!rcsmith    - or -   rcsmith@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu
rcsmith@analytics.com   - or -   RCSmith@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
From: ottavj@pegase.inria.fr (Luc Ottavj)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
Subject: Re: using wais to index man pages and info files
Date: 1 Sep 92 07:35:30 GMT
Organization: INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis (Fr)

|> There's a server at Inria (check the directory-of-servers) that does this
|> nicely for .
the source ra-mime-zenon-inria-fr is one of them. This source contains mime documents describibing
INRIA research reports . Each document contains an abstract in a text part and
an External-body pointer to the Postscript version of the report

Using mime gets more flexibility and  for exemple allows you to add external-body
parts containing things like the sources of the package , utilisation exemples with texts images 
graphics ..etc..

The appropriate use of FTP/ANON or FTP  access type give you some possibility of data access control
to any part of the document

For the wais indexation you can either use words in the mime document or in the associated man page
and/or in the sources.

 Here we are setting-up a similar waisindex (still non public ) in order to make
a permanent electronic workshop. ie a set of public/private mime documents
relative to the workshop administrative rules, the problems description
and the problems solutions ( text+meshes+computational or experimental results )

-- 
Luc Ottavj                          | Email : ottavj@pegase.inria.fr  
INRIA U.R. de Sophia Antipolis      | Phone : (33) 93 65 77 21       
 2004, Route des Lucioles BP 93     | Telex :      97 00 50 F        
 06902 Sophia Antipolis CEDEX France| Fax   : (33) 93 65 76 02
From: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
Subject: Re: using wais to index man pages and info files
Date: 29 Aug 1992 16:48:08 -0400
Organization: Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, Michigan
NNTP-Posting-Host: nigel.msen.com
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

one way to deal with multi-part documents is to use the MIME (multi-media
mail) format as a wrapper for your documents.  They might look something
like this...you'll want to study the spec for exact details.  

the metamail software from thumper.bellcore.com:/pub/nsb/ will help you out.
Getting the "external-reference" bit exactly right will be the challenge. 
There's a server at Inria (check the directory-of-servers) that does this
nicely for .

--Ed

Subject: traceroute: trace the path from one site to another
Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="next-part"

--next-part

Traceroute is a TCP/IP debugging tool that helps you determine the
network path from one site to another.  If the connection is down it will
generally indicate where the fault lies.  Like ping, traceroute will tell
you how long it takes to reach remote sites, and it can be used to
determine which nodes in the system are introducing delays.

--next-part
Content-type: application/external-reference; access-type=file;
    name="/usr/man/man1/traceroute.1"

Content-type: text/x-man-page
--next-part--
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: chrisc@bu.oz.au (Chris Christoff)
Subject: database files
Organization: ITS, Bond University
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 06:02:46 GMT

I have a question regarding the contents of the various files produced
when the indexer is run.
According to the description by Brewster Kahle in wais-8-b5/ir/DESIGN
the are 7 files produced called xxx.inv, doc,fn,hl,dct,src and status,
and he goes on to describe the function and content.

When I index files for the wais server on my Sun 3/60, using waisindex I
don't get the xxx.status file, but I do get a xxx.cat file. The xxx.doc
file I get looks nothing like the description of the same from Brewster
(although my xxx.cat file does somewhat match the description of his
xxx.doc).

What have I missed ???

Cheers,

Chris


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris CHRISTOFF			 email: chrisc@bu.oz.au
Manager, Communications		'phone: +61 75 951424  (075) 951424
Computer Services		   fax: +61 75 951456  (075) 951456
Bond University
Gold Coast
QLD  4229  AUSTRALIA
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: glenn@admin.acadiau.ca (GLENN DAVIDSON)
Subject: Does WAIS use ASN.1?
Organization: Acadia University
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 11:51:39 GMT


	I have been looking over the source code for wais-8-b5 to try to 
determine if wais uses an ASN.1 compiler and decompiler to encode and decode 
APDU packets. From what I can tell it does not but uses constants to define 
the TAGS which indicate specific data types within an APDU. These TAGS are 
the ones which would be defined in an ASN.1 description of the APDUs. This 
leads me to believe that wais uses a "hard coded" method of incoding and 
decoding APDUs and not the dynamic method of an ASN.1 compiler/decompiler. 
Since I have never seen code which definately uses ASN.1 to decode and 
encode I am not positive. Could someone please confirm this for me? Please 
respond directly using the address indicated below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn Davidson, User Consultant    | New more creative signature in the 
Acadia University Computer Centre  | works. Stayed tuned for developements.
Internet: GLENN@ACE.ACADIAU.CA     |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: westes@netcom.com (Will Estes)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
Subject: Need Human Factors Article On WAIS
Date: 1 Sep 92 22:57:40 GMT
Organization: Mail Group

Does anyone know if the following is available in Postscript format by
FTP?

	"Designing a Desktop Information System: Observaitions and
Issues" Thomas Erickson & Gitta Salomon.  Human Factor in Computing
Systems, CHI '91 Conference Proceddings  (pp. 49-54) April 1991, New
Orleans.  New York: ACM, 1991.

Thanks,
Will Estes		Internet: westes@sti.com
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
From: dagenais@vlsi.polymtl.ca (Michel Dagenais)
Subject: using wais to index man pages and info files
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:28:29 GMT

We have a software library that contains around 100 software packages 
(source code and executables for 1 or more architectures). Each package
gets a small summary and normally has a man page or info file. It would be
interesting to use wais (xwais) to index the summaries. Then, the user
would query the index through wais to find a software (for instance a
postscript interpreter) get the summary, and upon request should be shown
the man page or info file with a suitable viewer.

I would like suggestions on how to organize this with wais and in
particular how one can specify the type of objects being indexed in order
to call the appropriate viewer upon retrieval. Moreover, it is not clear to
me how to connect the summaries and the info/man pages. A special viewer
for the summary could ask the user if he wants to see more, in which case
the man page or info file would be shown to the user through the
appropriate program; this way, however, the man page or info file would not
be part of the network transparent querying process and would need to be 
local. Any suggestion or pointers to some portion of the documentation 
that i may have overlooked will be greatly appreciated.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Prof. Michel Dagenais			    dagenais@vlsi.polymtl.ca
Dept of Electrical and Computer Eng.
Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal		    tel: (514) 340-4029

---------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jonathan@tremor.think.com (Jonathan Goldman)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais
Subject: Re: Returning "standard" documents
Date: 1 Sep 92 19:33:20
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: tremor.quake.think.com
In-reply-to: warnock@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov's message of Tue, 1 Sep 1992 15:06:01 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.150601.27940@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> warnock@Hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov (Archie Warnock) writes:

   I notice that the weather server has some files that always seem to get
   sent back in response to a query, but I don't know if that's just
   because of the form of the question I send, or if there's some mechanism
   for making sure they _always_ get sent back.

This is just a coincidence.  There is no provision in the server to force a
result to be returned for any query, but...

   [...]

   If there's no such capability already present, we're willing to do it,
   but I figured this was a pretty good place to initiate a discussion on
   how it ought to be done before running off and playing "Lone
   Programmer". 

I think this would be a nice extension to the server.  You can do this by a
simple modification.  Let's assume there's a file called
<database_name>.always.  You could get the server to return it, much as it
returns the .src file or .cat file for "help" queries.

In ir.c you'll see a function called help_header - this is a good example
of how to create a docheader from a file.  You probably want to do
something better for the headline (like grab the first line from the file),
but it's a start.  you then splice it into the result list in
handleRelevanceFeedbackSearch.  If you wnat to insure the result is at the
top of the list, give it a score of 1000.  Be sure to take into account the
maximum number of results.

When you've done this, let me know.  I'll put it in the next release.
--
Jonny Goldman					Thinking Machines Corporation
jonathan@Think.com				1010 El Camino Real Suite 310
Plebe						Menlo Park, CA 94025
Wide Area Information Servers			415-329-9300x229