[From Dag Forssell (981207 1640)]
John Anderson (981203.2025)]
Does anybody know what's happened to the reference.com archives of
CSGNET? They don't seem to be there anymore.
Marc Abrams just called and we had a long talk about CSGnet archives. Last
summer, I shared a reasonably clean, complete set of CSGnet from the
beginning with both Lloyd and Mark. We had some three-way conversations on
what could be done.
Marc tried converting some of my files to pdf-format and created a pdf
index from that. He told us the index and pdf-search engine provided some
neat search options.
Marc and Lloyd discussed the possibility of creating individual ASCII files
for each e-mail message. This would allow a database to be created with
full search capability based on the subject line as well as text and would
facilitate posting the whole thing on some large website.
Just like I appointed myself deputy CSG archivist some years ago, Marc
seems to be doing the same. He just volunteered to focus on the archive for
the next two weeks or so and expects to sort out what can be done and what
it will look like.
He will start by assembling and improving the formatting of the archive
from day one (formatting mostly means cleaning up quoted paragraphs so they
are now jumbled). This means continuing where I have left off. While
assembled and formatted in Word, this will be converted into one complete
archive of something more than 100 MB of ASCII text so it becomes platform
independent. Marc will convert from Word to ASCII via WordPerfect so that
tabs and indentations are replaced with spaces on each line.
Next, Marc will run spell check to create a second archive. The positive of
that is that the archive will become more searchable. The negative is that
Marc may be trigger happy along the way and will change something he should
not have. That's why the uncorrected set is important. (I spell checked the
4 MB of text on the Demo diskettes back in 94-95, so I know how alert one
must be).
From the second archive (organized in chronological order, mostly in the
form of daily digests assembled into one file per month) Marc will create
pdf-files. From these (spell checked) pdf-files Marc will then create a pdf
index.
Our intent is to make available the original formatted but ASCII files (no
spell check), pdf-files (spell checked) and pdf index, along with the pdf
search engine, all on CD-ROM. As you can see, this will be platform
independent.
The idea of creating an ASCII database in a database format made of
individual posts will not be adressed at this time.
Marc is experimenting with inserting hyperlinks in pdf-files so as to
create threads, but that too will not be adressed at this time.
Just like Greg Williams and myself, Marc feels that the CSG archive is very
important. I remember Greg talking to me of the value of geographically
distributed archives. (If one house burns down, the complete archive
survives in another). Since Marc has a CD writer too, ultimately the
finished CD can be provided (for a steep price) both from Marc and from me.
In deference to my status as first deputy archivist, Marc asked me to post
this.
Questions, Comments?
Best, Dag
Dag Forssell
dag@forssell.com, www.forssell.com
23903 Via Flamenco, Valencia CA 91355-2808 USA
Tel: +1 805 254 1195 Fax: +1 805 254 7956
Dropping: forssell@scvnet.com.