HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cleggp@rebecca.its.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg)
Subject: Re: Getting AmiGuide to work?
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 19:31:12 GMT

In article <1993Jan25.165552.3741@cs.nott.ac.uk> pcxkrm@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (K.R.Marshall) writes:
>In article <11440@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> aforrest@cs.strath.ac.uk (Andrew R Forrest CS92) writes:
>>So as not to waste bandwidth, here is a suggestion I also wish to post: The problem
>>of line lengths when the lines contain control characters has been discussed. May I
>>suggest that reader programs only recognise paragraphs and re-wrap the words
>>depending on font-size, etc. This would allow proportional fonts, as many
>>control-characters as you could wish for, graphics inserted in text... Also, some
>>form of Hypertext linking would be nice. It might be good to define control-character
>>"brackets" to put round text which would be a link to another article. (All we need
>>now is a conversion program to translate Guide articles to Amigaguide documents...).
>
>I tried doing this for my version (the Atari guide), but most of the
>articles are formatted to some extent to use 80 column text, and they
>don't look right if you try to ignore the ends-of-lines. If we were
>going to do this we would need much stricter rules on text formatting,
>especially for lists.

Hmm.  Well, you can distinguish between paragraphs because of the blank lines.
You can detect a list because there (should be) 10 blank spaces from the
beginning of the line to the first non-space character...

>As for a graphics format, I guess GIF is slightly more appropriate,
>but I'm really not looking forward to dealing with them! - maybe we
>should just forget about graphics for the moment. (Not that I don't
>want to have to deal with them or anything!)
>

Yes, I think we're holding on any sort of graphics for a (long) while.  At
least until we've worked ALL the bugs out of the "universal database" format,
and so on.  As it is now, there is about 250k worth of information contained
in the three archives; about 100k each (plus the incomplete WORKING.NEW)...
If we had any decent graphics to go with them, you can imagine the data size
explosion.  Perhaps we should consider keeping graphics separate from the 
text info?  That way, if a hitchhiker is short on disk space (as most should
be, particularly after the guide gets big), they can just not download the
pictures, and get the text data separately.  Plus, it would be a lot easier
to deal with, I think.  Any comments?  (Not that your comments would amount
to much; I don't forsee adding graphics capabilities anytime soon, but you
never know...)

...Paul


-- 
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
      Paul Clegg, cleggp@rpi.edu.   Send me your Guide Articles! 
         System One RPG designer.   Project Galactic Guide Coordinator.
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
From: johnson@wrs.com (David Johnson)
Subject: Re: MACINTOSH guide? any?
Organization: Wind River Systems, Inc.
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 08:38:54 GMT

cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg) writes:

>In article <1993Jan21.172314.10076@iscsvax.uni.edu> rezabek1037@iscsvax.uni.edu (Will be President for Food) writes:
>>before i start writing up ENTRIES or somesuch, i want to know... are there any
>>MAC browsers or platforms yet whipped up?

>Not to my knowledge (which is pretty vast on this subject...  :)

>...Paul

Bummer :-(

DAVE (johnson@wrs.com)
From: dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk (`Grave' Dave Gymer)
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
Subject: Re: TUG! 2 --> (The Net Guide)
Keywords: TUG admin network gopher irc tcp-ip
Date: 21 Jan 93 14:32:56 GMT
Organization: Association of Slack Producing Geeks

In article <gavin.727489695@sorokin> gavin@sorokin.anu.edu.au (Gavin Longmuir) writes:
>dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk (`Grave' Dave Gymer) writes:
[...]
>This looks like a great idea, but I can see some problems - with a networked
>system and site that runs a server must be able to add new articles to the
>'database' and tell all other servers if has this new information (the info
>should only be transferred if required). Perhaps I'm talking about some kinda
>cross between IRC and the gopher.

Well, I as thinking that each server (other than the `root' one) would at some
point in time pull down the index from some other server or set of servers,
see what was new or changed, and then pull down those articles into its local
database.  In making each server responsible for its own database, we also
allow it to set its own policy about when to update stuff; each server could
also refuse to service certain hosts at certain times, thus allowing it to set
a policy on when it will allow other servers to update from its database.

The server updating utself then appears to the server being updated from as a
normal client process, simplifying both the protocol and the code.

>Given my above idea - there would have to be a new protocol with at least 4
>different request/information formats (packets etc..); one giving the physical
>status of all server links,

I don't think this is necessary or even desirable; there's no reason why the
links should be anything other than transitory, created anew for each request
(this is how gopher works).

>one for the guides index (I can't any reason why
>there can't be more than one entry for a topic - like dictionaries)

Absolutely.

>which also
>contains the locations of the entries (the guide should evolve so when a server
>is decommissioned all articles in it's database [which don't exist elsewhere]
>are forgotten by the other servers).

Well, I can see two possibilities here:

1. All servers hold all articles.  This is in some repects desirable as it
allows readers to fetch any article required from a relatively local site.

2. As stated earlier, each server could periodically query other servers as to
the articles available, and build index and cross reference lists from the sum
of this information, and use gopher-style links merely to the entry text
itself.

[...]
>Just my ideas (but I may just like to work of such a beast!)

Well, I sure as hell don't want to have to tackle such a thing alone!  :-)

-- Dave
-- 
`Grave' Dave Gymer | ``The only rule in Calvinball is that you can't
42 St Mary's Park  |   play the same rule twice.'' -- Calvin and Hobbes
Louth, Lincs       |----------------------------------------------------
LN11 0EF, England  |         Warning, Linux fanatic in transit.
From: gavin@sorokin.anu.edu.au (Gavin K. Longmuir)
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
Subject: Re: TUG! 2 --> (The Net Guide)
Date: 25 Jan 93 01:19:07 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
Reply-To: gavin@sorokin.anu.edu.au (Gavin Longmuir)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.76.12
Keywords: TUG admin network gopher irc tcp-ip
Organisation: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University

dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk (`Grave' Dave Gymer) writes:

>In article <gavin.727489695@sorokin> gavin@sorokin.anu.edu.au (Gavin Longmuir) writes:
>>dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk (`Grave' Dave Gymer) writes:
>[...]
>>This looks like a great idea, but I can see some problems - with a networked
>>system and site that runs a server must be able to add new articles to the
>>'database' and tell all other servers if has this new information (the info
>>should only be transferred if required). Perhaps I'm talking about some kinda
>>cross between IRC and the gopher.

>Well, I as thinking that each server (other than the `root' one) would at some
>point in time pull down the index from some other server or set of servers,
>see what was new or changed, and then pull down those articles into its local
>database.  In making each server responsible for its own database, we also
>allow it to set its own policy about when to update stuff; each server could
>also refuse to service certain hosts at certain times, thus allowing it to set
>a policy on when it will allow other servers to update from its database.

But should there be a 'root' node?

TNG shouldn't be tied down to any one node or group of admin.

Gavin.
-- 
       *                     Gavin Longmuir - General Dog's Body and Programmer
    *    *               Demography Program, Research School of Social Sciences
       *               Australian National University, Canberra 0200, AUSTRALIA
Voice: +61 6 249 0530  FAX: +61 6 257 1893  InterNet: Gavin.Longmuir@anu.edu.au       *      UUCP: {uunet,ubc-vision,ukc,prlb2}!munnari!coombs.anu.edu.au!gavin
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: Graphics for PGG (was Re: Getting AmiGuide to work?)
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 22:06:31 GMT

In article <b2q3#a_@rpi.edu>, cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg) writes:
> Perhaps .ARJ .TIFF files?  Maybe .LZH .GIF files?  How about .ZOO'd .PCX?

  GIF files are already LZW compressed, so they can't be reduced any more
without being undone and recomporessed a different way (this is how GIFBLAST
works).

  If you don't care about decompression time, the best known lossless graphics
compression technique right now (as if this isn't going to change) is fractal
compression.  Does anybody know if there is a lossy version of this?

 |  __L__
-|-  ___  Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub
 |  | o | kv07@iastate.edu
 |/ `---' Iowa State University
/|   ___  Math Department
 |  |___| 400 Carver Hall
 |  |___| Ames, IA  50011
 J  _____
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
From: cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg)
Subject: Graphics for PGG (was Re: Getting AmiGuide to work?)
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 16:05:31 GMT

In article <1k37ltINNdtu@emmental.csv.warwick.ac.uk> phudl@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Mr S J Liddicott) writes:
>I suggest using JPEG compression.  It's supposed to give massive saivings
>(but it is NOT an altogther lossless method)
>
>There is a shareware PC Jpeg program available from THE SOFTWARE LABS
>Overland Drive (somewhere Clifornia) etc.... well what I'm saying is
>is the concept ok?  they reckon 1 MEG pictures can go down to 69K
>Seems good to me...

I looked at JPEG compression at one point, when my local BBSs at home thought
it was a cool idea.  The only problem with it is that you lose resolution, and
the more space you save, the more resolution you lose.

I don't want to throw away the idea of compression; space is at a premium for
everyone, BUT.  But, I think quality is more important than that.  If you want
to limit filesize of the graphic images, I think placing a resolution and pic-
ture size limit is a better idea.  Perhaps limiting the resolution to 320x200
x256, perhaps GIF format.  And, since we're going to need a specific front-
end program to display the graphics anyway, perhaps we should do something a
little non-standard, perhaps use Bitmaps compressed with, perhaps, ZIP comp=
ression...

...Paul


-- 
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
      Paul Clegg, cleggp@rpi.edu.   Send me your Guide Articles! 
         System One RPG designer.   Project Galactic Guide Coordinator.
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: ISO Code, bold, italic ....
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:24:54 GMT

In article <1jm7ijINNre8@iraul1.ira.uka.de>, S_KOEHLER@iravcl.ira.uka.de (|S|
Tobias Koehler) writes:
> Until now we only had _underlining_. And I don't know if any Guide reader
took
> care of this. Taking a single character as toggle character is a good idea.
> If we take \, it can be interpreted together with the next letter as a toggle
> signal. For example \bHoopy\b would give you the word Hoopy in bold print.
> \b switches to bold, and back to nonbold again. Similarly we can use \i for
> italic, \u for underlining, \e for superscript, \s for subscript. If one
wants
> to have a backslash in the text, it can be generated with \\. This system
> allows to have a pretty screen image (on systems with graphics mode) and,
> for example together with LaTeX, a nice output. One could even write a LaTeX
> style that inputs an article directly. (It should take care of the extended
> character set, as described above).

  Sure, the extended characters can be abbreviated as multi letter combinations.
the toggle could be some sort of combine command.  Like \coe\c would mean to
combine the oe into an o-umlaut.  If the system doesn't have the character that
combination corresponds to, it just ignores it and you get the standard
approximation "oe".

  Note that the display program doesn't even have to worry about this.  The
update program would be the one going through replacing "combination"
characters.  The display programs wouldn't have to be changed at all.

  Of course, one of the main reasons I like this idea so much is because it
isn't me that would have to write the code to do it :-)

 |  __L__
-|-  ___  Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub
 |  | o | kv07@iastate.edu
 |/ `---' Iowa State University
/|   ___  Math Department
 |  |___| 400 Carver Hall
 |  |___| Ames, IA  50011
 J  _____
From: cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg)
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
Subject: Two Interesting Tidbits
Date: 27 Jan 93 17:20:22 GMT
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

Two interesting tidbits of information:

1)  A Macintosh Hypercard Guide reader is in the works, by Dan White, and
    apparently he's just working out some rough edges...

2)  The subdirectory on Steve's vela.acs.oakland.edu FTP site has been
    changed from "pub/swbaker" to "pub/galactic-guide".  Apparently the
    sysadmin there has recognized the greatness of the Project!  :)

...Paul


-- 
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
      Paul Clegg, cleggp@rpi.edu.   Send me your Guide Articles! 
         System One RPG designer.   Project Galactic Guide Coordinator.
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
From: dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk (`Grave' Dave Gymer)
Subject: Re: ISO Code, bold, italic ....
Organization: Association of Slack Producing Geeks
	<1jm7ijINNre8@iraul1.ira.uka.de> <1993Jan21.142454@IASTATE.EDU>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 22:57:50 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.142454@IASTATE.EDU> kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:
>Note that the display program doesn't even have to worry about this.  The
>update program would be the one going through replacing "combination"
>characters.  The display programs wouldn't have to be changed at all.

This may be true for TG! for DOS, but it ain't for TUG!.  Two TUG!'s with
different window managers might want to use the same filestore, so the
interpretation of such things _must_ be left until the text actually reaches
the reader program.

In any case, since the reade may want to reformat text into a different number
of columns, one might just as well leave this sort of thing until then.

Anyway, what does it matter which program must be changed?  The changes still
add up to the same amount of work overall.

-- Dave
--
`Grave' Dave Gymer, 42 St Mary's Park, Louth, Lincolnshire, LN11 0EF, England
<dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk  (but I'm not always in, and I have no answering machine)>
MM SS -- DD OO SS     The Thing That Should Not Be.  | Vote for insanity. You
MM SS -- DD OO SS     But E.vil N.ever D.ies.        |   know it makes sense.
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
From: cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg)
Subject: Re: Graphic format
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 16:11:14 GMT

In article <1993Jan26.132748.7630@cs.nott.ac.uk> pcxkrm@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (K.R.Marshall) writes:
>To be honest - I'm going to have _real_ problems dealing with any form
>of bit-mapped colour graphics on the Atari, as people will want to use
>the higher resolutions for reading, and these only provide 4 or 2
>colours! Even the lowest res allows only 16 colours on-screen, and I
>really don't want to get into complicated dithering techniques, so I
>think everyone should be aware that a graphics standard might limit
>the systems for which the guide is workable. (Mind you, if it's only
>the Atari that's the problem everyone might just turn around and say
>"so what?" - but I don't think this is a healthy attitude!)
>
>Some kind of vector graphic system might be better - but this wouldn't
>allow any nice scanned images etc.

Well, that's one reason why I said the graphics and the text should be kept
completely separate; that way you don't even have to bother with removing the
graphics information from the archive files (not that that's a big deal)...
Like I said, I'm not planning on incorporating graphic images any time soon,
I'm just entertaining comments and ideas...

And yes, I'm afraid we'd probably end up with 90% (or more) scanned images --
what other kind of images would be useful for something like this?  Road
maps, maybe, but even then...

...Paul


-- 
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
      Paul Clegg, cleggp@rpi.edu.   Send me your Guide Articles! 
         System One RPG designer.   Project Galactic Guide Coordinator.
+                +        +    +  + + +  +    +        +                +
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
From: dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk (Dave `geek' Gymer)
Subject: Re: Graphics for PGG (was Re: Getting AmiGuide to work?)
Organization: Nottingham University
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 11:30:45 GMT

In article <kzp30am@rpi.edu> cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg) writes:
>I looked at JPEG compression at one point, when my local BBSs at home thought
>it was a cool idea.  The only problem with it is that you lose resolution, and
>the more space you save, the more resolution you lose.

Well, yeah, but the `loss' is designed to be invisible to the human
eye.

The real problem with JPEGs, as pointed out by another poster, is the
time it takes to decompress and display them.

Perhaps compressed portable bitmaps or GIFs are the way to go after
all.

-- Dave
-- 
`Grave' Dave Gymer, 42 St Mary's Park, Louth, Lincolnshire, LN11 0EF, England
 dpg@cs.nott.ac.uk  (but I'm not always in, and I have no answering machine)
These opinions are mine. I doubt that they have ever belonged to anyone else,
but if you think you might have lost them, please get in touch. With a shrink.
From: rezabek1037@iscsvax.uni.edu (Will be President for Food)
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
Subject: MACINTOSH guide? any?
Date: 21 Jan 93 17:23:13 -0600
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

before i start writing up ENTRIES or somesuch, i want to know... are there any
MAC browsers or platforms yet whipped up?

.rez
From: aforrest@cs.strath.ac.uk (Andrew R Forrest CS92)
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
Subject: Getting AmiGuide to work?
Date: 25 Jan 93 13:54:31 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland.


I am having a problem getting the Amiga version of the Guide reader program to work.
So this is really an open letter to James Palmer, but I thought I'd post it to the
net so that anybody who *has* got it to work, or can work out what I am doing wrong,
can perhaps help me.

Erm, I downloaded the Amiguide program and the two most recent ".NEW" files, put it
all on a disk, stirred vigorously, and tried to run the program. Okay, so it ran fine
(even if it did seem to require the WB disk to be inserted more than I would have
liked (I have only one disk-drive, you see).

The problems started happening when I clicked on the button to incorporate new
articles. It said it couldn't find a file called "RAM:Index 1". So I created an empty
file called "Index 1" and placed it in the RAM disk. This time, the articles seemed
to be added alright, but the program required two disk-swaps ("Please insert volume
Workbench in any drive", "Please insert volume GUIDE in any drive") per article, so I
aborted the operation after about three articles, and tried to *use* my newly-added
articles. It didn't work.

What does the program want when it asks for the Workbench (so that I could stash it
temporarily in RAM)? Where is the "Index 1" file supposed to come from? Why am I
here? What is it all about? Where are the file-format specifications for the article
files, so that I could knock up my own reader in AMOS (for the benefit of all,
naturally)?


So as not to waste bandwidth, here is a suggestion I also wish to post: The problem
of line lengths when the lines contain control characters has been discussed. May I
suggest that reader programs only recognise paragraphs and re-wrap the words
depending on font-size, etc. This would allow proportional fonts, as many
control-characters as you could wish for, graphics inserted in text... Also, some
form of Hypertext linking would be nice. It might be good to define control-character
"brackets" to put round text which would be a link to another article. (All we need
now is a conversion program to translate Guide articles to Amigaguide documents...).
Might I also suggest a graphics standard to be adopted. Just a thought. (Obviously,
being an Amiga-user, I would suggest IFF |-)


Please post replies to me (aforrest@cs.strath.ac.uk), and I'll post them back to the
group.

Thanks in advance.

-- 
|     \=====\  | Andrew Forrest               -  2nd Year Computing Science   |
|    /\\       | University of Strathclyde    -  aforrest@cs.strath.ac.uk     |
|   /==\\==(   |--------------------------------------------------------------|
| _(    )\     | "Hi ho!" - The seven vertically-challanged-people. (PC tested|
From: shepa@sersun1 (Shepherd A J)
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
Subject: The Real HHGGTTG..
Date: 28 Jan 93 09:03:11 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]




This is the text of a letter I have been asked to post. No spelling or
caps flames please, I did not write this. This posting is a text file as
I received it. Share and enjoy...

David Hodges
68 Gotch Road 
Barton Seagrave
Kettering
Northamptonshire 
NN15 6UQ
ENGLAND

  Hi Guys
         This is to inform you that you are not the only people
running a HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE -
I have been running (WITH THE PERMISSION OF DOUGLAS ADAMS)
a huge database known as the "REAL HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE TO THE 
GALAXY" which I use to raise money for various charities at 
Science Fiction conventions.
At these conventions people can browse through the pages of the
GUIDE, add new pages, or even bid for the printout in an auction.
The next convention where I hope to be a major attraction will 
be VOCON (SEPT-OCT 93 IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND )It is a con 
covering all of the work of DOUGLAS ADAMS- if you want details
of this con or ZZ9 PLURAL Z ALPHA (THE HITCH-HIKERS APPRECIATION 
SOCIETY) or my GUIDE please write to me at the above address.
My guide has now been running for well over 5 years and I have
over 650 pages covering over 1200 subjects,
With sampled sound and title picture the files occupies about
14 mega bytes (I am always after more pages) I send a "BODY
DEBIT CARD" to anyone who writes a decent entry and I want entrys 
on all subjects.
Unfortunately I an not into comms so you would have to write to   
me.
 
MY DATABASE RUNS ON A MODIFIED ATARI MEGA4 WITH 16Mhz CPU
AND 105 MEG QUANTUM HD.
the software was written for me and is a cardfile type database
(with a read only idiot proof version for use at cons.
 
THE LAST CONVENTION I WENT TO WAS IN  KIEV  THE CAPITOL OF THE 
UKRAINE IN THE FORMER U.S.S.R. (AND VERY NEAR CHERNOBYL).



--
Look up, Look Down, Look at Mr. Frying Pan - SPLAT! - 
---> Antony J. "Doppelganger" Shepherd - shepa@essex.ac.uk <---
Freedom for Tooting!
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide