From: peterd@bunyip.com (Peter Deutsch)
Subject: Re: index for all of gopherspace
Organization: Bunyip Information Systems (the archie people)
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 02:38:15 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.012727.22716@ra.msstate.edu> fwp@CC.MsState.Edu  
(Frank Peters) writes:
> In article <1992Jul28.002902.8570@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>  
peterd@bunyip.com (Peter Deutsch) says:
> :
  .  .
> Indeed.  I didn't use the reference to archie lightly.  It seems to
> provide a very nice framework for indexing an uncoordinated and
> distributed information pool like the internet.
> 
> The problem is that the information necessary to build a useful
> information index isn't really there in a lot of protocols including
> FTP and gopher.  I used archie to find a software package recently.   
I
> found files at a site that had a recently created version of the
> package...yet that version turned out to be older than other versions
> made available previously.
> 
> It might be a useful exercise (one that, no doubt, has been done
> before) to identify what information about a given gopher entry or
> package available for FTP would be useful for indexing and see how  
much
> of it can be practically made available.  Things like (this isn't a
> complete list...just off the top of my head) size, version ID, a  
brief
> (one line or so) description, a keyword list, an archive date.


You should pick up a copy of the DRAFT IAFA document that is
being created by the Internet Anonymous FTP Archives Working
Group of the IETF, it addresses exactly this kind of question by
defining a set of recommended informational templates that we
will be asking archive site operators to make available. There 
are templates to store additional information about software
packages, Abstracts for papers, lists of available services, etc.
We didn't list "Gopher sites", but there are several that either
could be used or could serve as a model for defining a new template.
The idea with such templates is that they are inherently easier to
fill out, so people are more inclined to fill them out, and they
are fairly easy to pick up, index and serve back to the net, so 
hopefully a variety of such indexing services will come into existance.
Given that we think the Yellow Pages problem (ie the problem
of locating specific services and service providers in a sea
of a million hosts)  is about to go away, we think such an indexing
approach has a lot of potential.

BTW, we are not trying to define "all possible information", merely get
some of the most obviously useful stuff standardized and get people 
into the habit of providing this kind of "meta-data" about the
information they are serving. I have described the last IETF
as the "year of the template" since the idea seems to be simultaneously
being discovered in multiple user services working groups I attended.
I smell a trend in the air....

You can get the latest draft of the IAFA doc from 
"archives.cc.mcgill.ca" in the files "pub/iafa/draft.part.I" and 
"pub/iafa/draft.part.II".  the email list for this work is 
"iafa@cc.mcgill.ca" and if you'd like  to join in the discussion send 
email to "iafa-request@cc.mcgill.ca". There is also an archive of the 
list on archives.cc.mcgill.ca in the directory "pub/mailing-lists".

We hope to freeze this doc by November, so feedback from anyone
who is interested in eagerly sought ASAP. Please send it to the iafa 
list so everyone sees it.


				- peterd
Newsgroups: alt.gopher