A Beginner's Guide to the Internet/INTERNET.ISO/text/faqs/wais.faq

Internet Message Format | 1995-03-23 | 5.5 KB

From: [e-mail] (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais,alt.wais
Subject: WAIS FAQ part 0 of n: getting started
Date: 5 May 92 20:50:22 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail]

Welcome to comp.infosystems.wais!  This is a first pass at a
"frequently asked questions" posting for WAIS, intended to get
the new user up and going in a reasonable amount of time, and
also to help share some of the lore that more experienced users
have accumulated in how to build indexes and interface WAIS
with other systems.

Part 0 of this FAQ is a list of topics to cover and a kind of
roadmap to get started.  Not all of the rest have been assigned or
filled in yet.  It's more of a "questions without answers" document.

0 (*)    getting started
1
2    Using WAIS to find out about WAIS
3    The directory of servers and how to find out where to look
4
5
6    WAIS document types
7
8    Z39.50 protocol and standards
9
10
11    Scoring algorithms, relevance feedback, and "boolean search"
12
13    Simple WAIS access via telnet etc.
14
15    Indexing netnews with WAIS
16
17    WAIS interfaces via Gopher and World Wide Web (W3)
18    "waisindex" internals and programming notes
19
20    FTP'ing the software
21
22    Common problems and fixes to existing clients
23    Conferences, meetings, get-togethers, workshops
24
25    References and bibliography

(Note: this list is subject to change etc. and will be revised as
there is text to fill each spot.)

I'm going to scour through the archives of alt.wais and wais-talk
to try to find some of the answers to some of these questions.
You should be able to get a good running start by starting with
anonymous FTP to
    think.com:/wais/
where you will find client and server software.

Thanks to the 200-odd people who voted for the group, and to
Brewster and the crowd at Thinking Machines for keeping the ball
rolling.

--
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. [e-mail]
      MSEN Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 [phone]
"Dogmatic attachement to the supposed merits of a particular structure
   hinders the search of an appropriate structure" -- Robert Fripp
..
Hope you know what you're doing ...
Data directory is /big/gd
Port is 70
Logging to File /usr/adm/gopherd.l

Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu comp.infosystems.wais:6 alt.wais:714
Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!yale!yale.edu!think.com!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rphroy!ilium!heifetz!emv
From: [e-mail] (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.wais,alt.wais
Subject: WAIS FAQ part 20 of n: FTP'ing the software
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 6 May 92 22:13:10 GMT
Organization: MSEN, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, MI
Lines: 90

This is a first pass at a "frequently asked questions" series for WAIS.

Part 20 of this FAQ is a pointer to where you can FTP the WAIS
server and the various client software.

20 (*)    FTP'ing the software
21
22    Common problems and fixes to existing clients
23    Conferences, meetings, get-togethers, workshops
24
25    References and bibliography
0  [+]    getting started
1
2    Using WAIS to find out about WAIS
3    The directory of servers and how to find out where to look
4
5
6    WAIS document types
7
8    Z39.50 protocol and standards
9
10
11    Scoring algorithms, relevance feedback, and "boolean search"
12
13    Simple WAIS access via telnet etc.
14
15    Indexing netnews with WAIS
16
17    WAIS interfaces via Gopher and World Wide Web (W3)
18    "waisindex" internals and programming notes
19

The home of WAIS at Thinking Machines is
    think.com:/wais/

In that directory you will find the following software and data:

think.com /wais/wais-8-b4.1.tar.Z

    WAIS server and client software for Unix.  Includes a GNU
    emacs client (wais.el), a curses-based client (swais),
    a dumb tty client (waissearch), an indexer (waisindex),
    and a Z39.50 server (waisserver).

think.com /wais/WAIStation-0-63.sit.hqx

    WAIStation client software for the Mac (requires MacTCP)

think.com /wais/WAIStation-NeXT-1.9.1.tar.Z

    WAIStation client and server software for the NeXT.  Includes
    an Objective-C wrapper around the WAIS protocol, so that you
    can design your own programs that plug into WAIS without going
    deep into details about the protocol.

think.com /wais/wais-sources.tar.Z

    A current copy of the WAIS "directory of servers", this tar
    file will let you get a start on seeing what all is available
    in the various WAIS databases.

There is further WAIS development work going on at the U of North
Carolina; the home of that stuff is samba.oit.unc.edu:/pub/wais/UNC/.

samba.oit.unc.edu /pub/wais/UNC/Windows/wwais103.zip

    WAIS for Windows.  Requires Novell's "Lan Workplace for DOS".
    Uses Visual Basic as its visual interface; you can create your
    own custom client using Visual Basic, without having to know
    the first thing about C.

samba.oit.unc.edu /pub/wais/UNC/DOS/doswais.zip

    WAIS for MS-DOS.  Uses the standard Clarkson packet drivers
    and at Waterloo TCP kernel.

WAIS has also been ported to other systems, including VMS, the IBM
RS/6000, Motif, and SunView.  This section will be filled out later
with details.

--
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. [e-mail]
      MSEN Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 [phone]
"Dogmatic attachement to the supposed merits of a particular structure
   hinders the search of an appropriate structure" -- Robert Fripp





..
Hope you know what you're doing ...
Data directory is /big/gd
Port is 70
Logging to File /usr/adm/gopherd.l
.