eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (10/19/88)
Unfortunately, pioneer is down, as I was planning to make this announcement
on our group account, so I am posting this from my personal account.
IF you can read, please direct specific mail messages to:
siggraph@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov, NOT MY MAIL BOX! (This is a
test of literacy. On to the REAL message.
For a long time now, a lot of people have been asking simple information
queries in places like comp.graphics. This resulted in the inevitable
repeating of topics, flood of innane news messages (many of which are wrong),
and a repeating cycle which bring disillusionment.
Computer graphics, unlike a lot of disciplines, has an overseer of the
literature. If you open up an ACM/SIGGRAPH proceedings you will notice
a reference to "References" to Baldev Singh (currently at MCC). Baldev
has has published significant references in the Computer Graphics
Quartery for a couple of years (and is preparing for another shortly).
These bibliographies:
%A Baldev Singh
%T Computer Grap[hics Literature for 1986: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 21
%N 3
%D June 1987
%P 189-208
and
%A Baldev Singh
%A Gunther Schrack
%T Computer Grap[hics Literature for 1985: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 20
%N 3
%D July 1986
%P 85-145
Coverage in the field (for graphics) is quite good. I know, I am trying
to maintain a comprehensive study of another field (see postings in
comp.arch or comp.parallel). The problem is searching for literature
on a paper database is difficult (I won't get into details, take my word).
Frequently entries are also wrong (not as bad as the net however).
A machine readable form however, solves many of these problems. You can
update a machine readable form. The problem becomes then of distribution
and search, surprise! something computers are good for! It is with this
back ground that we in the Bay Area Association for Computing Machinery's
Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics announce the availability
of Singh's ACM/SIGGRAPH bibliography in a machine readable form.
While Baldev will oversee the collection and quality of entries, we
with a generous donation of cycles and disk space from the
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) will help oversee the redistribution
of the computer graphics bibliography.
This first article will describe how hosts on the Internet can retrieve
the computer graphics bibliography. Two other optional means for those
not on the Internet will be presented over the next two days (but clearly
Internet is the superior way to do this).
THERE ARE TWO DANGERS inherent in all of these means.
The bibliography is kind of big. It's not a megabyte, but it's
getting there. IF YOU ARE at an Internet site with lots of users,
it's kind of dumb if you ALL made personal copies (n megabytes ;-).
So before you copy, agree who at your site will oversee obtaining it.
One copy per site please.
The second danger is everybody copying at the same time. The information
which follows will illustrate the problem. The DEC host which you be
copying from is DEC's gateway to the Internet. It will be a tragedy
to abuse this gateway if every site tried to copy at once. I know,
we provide the 9600 baud IMP port to DEC. So let's not abuse this,
let's be patient and take our turns. 1) copy the computer graphics
bibliography only during the weekends or evenings Pacific Daylight
or Standard time. 2) copy on a randomly determined evening of the week.
How? Flip a coin 3 times (say HTH, make Head == 0, Tails == 1,
this translates to 010 binary or 2 base 10). Using Sunday as 1,
make Monday 2, copy Monday evening P[SD]T. (HHH or 000, retry).
If this is confusing, wait for the weekend. AGAIN copy only in the evenings.
Now the questions you have all been patiently waiting for and I have been
rambling: where do I get, and how do I get it. The Internet host is
the machine gatekeeper.dec.com [128.45.9.52]. Please respect this
machine (hacker ethic) for the assistance DEC is providing. We don't
wish to yank the bibliography from this machine. Don't try to break in,
please.
Old time ARPAnet hackers will know where to go from here.
The "how" is a process called anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol
or Program, hasn't changed since 1973 ;-)] Don't all do this at once.
Below is a sample session with annotation as to how this works.
Catch the names of the subdirectories and files below. A lot
of people aren't familiar with distributed systems other than Email, so
we've made the language oversimplistic, if you have problems consult
your local network guru.
Note the bibliographies exist in a data compressed binary form. Use
the Unix uncompress(1) command to decode them. Not on a Unix system?
Tough for the time being. Try to find one. The further format
of individual entries is Unix refer format (a sample, see the
two references above). This is how Singh has them, and also how my
bibliography is stored. Refer has lots of advantages over other
systems: free-format, widely available on Unix systems, uses a minimum
of space, ASCII, fully machine and human readable (it separates
the binary data from the text), fairly easy to learn, easily
converted to other formats (like [bib]TeX, Scribe, etc.)
Start script
eos % ftp gatekeeper.dec.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ issue this command, after some time you get:
Connected to gatekeeper.dec.com.
220 gatekeeper.dec.com FTP server (Version 4.28
Name (gatekeeper.dec.com:######): anonymous
^^^^^^^^^ use this name
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:
^^^^^^^^ does not echo, I typed "guest," doesn't matter
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd pub/graf-bib
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ change directory to pub/graf-bib
200 CWD command okay.
ftp> binary
^^^^^^ very important, you are getting compressed binary files
200 Type set to I.
ftp> ls
^^ optional just to should you what you are getting ('dir' is okay, too)
200 PORT command okay.
150 Opening data connection for /bin/ls (128.102.21.2,1118) (0 bytes).
bib85.Z
bib86.Z
226 Transfer complete.
^^^^^^^ those two filenames are what you want!
18 bytes received in 0.2 seconds (0.09 Kbytes/s)
ftp> mget *
^^^^^^ asks for all (star) files
mget bib85.Z?
mget bib86.Z?
^ you type "y <cr>" or "n <cr>" if you want them.
NOTE: THIS WILL TAKE SOME TIME.
ftp> quit
^^^^ done
221 Goodbye.
eos % # Now you can uncompress bib85.Z, etc.
end script
If you don't have a network guru, send mail to siggraph, not the poster of
this note below. (Illiterates will type "reply" or "follow-up" to news.
Sorry, I'm very tired of this. That's why I'm doing this.) Big thanks
are due to Brian Reid and Jamie Painter (at DEC for this work).
Rick Beach okay'ed ACM copyrights. This is not for profit. Please
ACK the above people and organizations (in particular, Baldev)
when citing. As I hope you can tell, we are really trying to advance
the state of the art in computer graphics. This should benefit
experts as well as students alike. It also shows the use of technologies
other than graphics to our (graphics) benefit.
The next two notes will concern two added ways of getting references:
direct electronic mail daemons, and just asking for a floppy (low tech).
We in the Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH local group will be adding to these.
Reference contributions and corrections are welcome. It's only possible
if we work together to see this through.
See you tomorrow. Be certain to read and try and understand ALL directions.
It's confusing, but so is most hi-tech. 8-)
Another gross generalization from
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
ex-Lame-duck Prez. Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH
resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
"Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
{uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
"Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (10/20/88)
IF you can read, please direct specific mail messages to:
siggraph@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov, NOT MY MAIL BOX!
Yesterday I described the availabilty of Singh's bibliography to
Internet sites:
%A Baldev Singh
%T Computer Graphics Literature for 1986: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 21
%N 3
%D June 1987
%P 189-208
and
%A Baldev Singh
%A Gunther Schrack
%T Computer Grap[hics Literature for 1985: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 20
%N 3
%D July 1986
%P 85-145
I described the advantages of searching and reformatting. I described
anonymous FTP. This is the way to go if you are a major Internet
site like most universities. The problem is: what about more casual users,
poor people with small disks? Well, the files reside of DEC's disk.
Just LEAVE THEM THERE. Let Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH and Singh maintain them.
Then how do you access it? By electronic mail.
A similar system exists at the Argonne National Labs (and AT&T Bell Labs):
netlib numerical software distribution [CACM ref. if you need it].
A similar set up for benchmarks exists at the NBS (See latest IEEE Computer).
Why not do this for graphics references?
With a generous donation of cycles and disk space from the
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and some software from CSIL at Stanford
we have done just this.
THERE ARE TWO DANGERS inherent:
The bibliography is kind of big.
The second danger is everybody copying at the same time.
The DEC host which you be copying from is DEC's gateway to the Internet.
It will be a tragedy to abuse this gateway if every site tried to copy
at once. So let's not abuse this, let's be patient and take our turns.
1) retrive references only during the weekends or evenings Pacific Daylight
or Standard time.
2) copy on a randomly determined evening of the week.
How? Flip a coin 3 times (say THT make Head == 0, Tails == 1,
this translates to 101 binary or 5 base 10). Using Sunday as 1,
make Thursday 5, copy Thursday evening P[SD]T. (HHH or 000, retry).
If this is confusing, wait for the weekend. AGAIN copy only in the evenings.
Where, okay here goes the dangerous information:
send mail to:
graf-bib-server@decwrl.dec.com
This can also be
{your favorite UUCP path}!decwrl!graf-bib-server
or if you work for DEC and have ENET access:
DECWRL::graf-bib-server
Your mailer should ask for a "Subject:" field. This is important.
If your mailer doesn't (and lots don't) ask your system folk about
mailrc file or mh_profiles or how to invoke this field. Because you
should place the keywords in that subject field. One special keyword
is "help." You get a short little description. Make the first
alphanumeric (don't give "years"). Additional keywords are conjective
(and's) causing a smaller and smaller search. The contents aren't
perfect, but give us time.
Your mail is answered by the server daemon. It searches and tries to find
relevant cited keywords (up to 6 significant first characters. Choose
carefully. Don't ask for all references with "computer graphics."
Hope you understand why. Just try "help" as your first keyword
unless you know what you are looking for. The information comes back
in the aforementioned (yesterday) refer format.
If you don't have a network guru, send mail to siggraph, not the poster of
this note below. (Illiterates will type "reply" or "follow-up" to news.
Sorry, I'm very tired of this. That's why I'm doing this.) Big thanks
are due to Brian Reid and Jamie Painter (at DEC for this work).
Rick Beach okay'ed ACM copyrights. This is not for profit. Please
ACK the above people and organizations (in particular, Baldev)
when citing. As I hope you can tell, we are really trying to advance
the state of the art in computer graphics. This should benefit
experts as well as students alike. It also shows the use of technologies
other than graphics to our (graphics) benefit.
Our last note will concern one more way of getting references:
just asking for a floppy (low tech).
We in the Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH local group will be adding to these.
Reference contributions and corrections are welcome. It's only possible
if we work together to see this through.
See you tomorrow. Be certain to read and try and understand ALL directions.
It's confusing, but so is most hi-tech. 8-)
Another gross generalization from
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
ex-Lame-duck Prez. Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH
resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
"Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
{uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
"Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (10/21/88)
Yesterday I described the availabilty of Singh's bibliography
via electronic mail:
%A Baldev Singh
%T Computer Graphics Literature for 1986: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 21
%N 3
%D June 1987
%P 189-208
and
%A Baldev Singh
%A Gunther Schrack
%T Computer Graphics Literature for 1985: A Bibliography
%J Computer Graphics
%V 20
%N 3
%D July 1986
%P 85-145
I described the advantages of searching and reformatting,
anonymous FTP. I then went into describe electronic mail retrieval
Hopefully, you are all co-ordinating, and flipping pennies. 8-)
The last method of getting this information is the most low-tech.
You send us a 1 MB of disk(s) and we will place it in ASCII word processing
files:
Ed Post
Secretary/Treasurer
Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH
P.O. Box 3553
Santa Clara, CA 95055
We will currently do this for free so long as you send return
postage and are VERY patient with us. In the future, when we
determine demand, Ed may ask for a small handling fee (he's a
private consultant). (you still have to be patient: 6-8 weeks).
THERE ARE TWO DANGERS inherent:
The bibliography is kind of big.
The second danger is everybody asking at the same time.
We in the Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH local group will be adding to these.
Reference contributions and corrections are welcome. It's only possible
if we work together to see this through. We can always use key entry
and other assistance or donations, storage media (like if you do a graphics TR?
send us a copy and we can add it.)
Have fun.
Another gross generalization from
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
ex-Lame-duck Prez. Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH
resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
"Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
{uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
"Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."
BTW: I have copies of Singh's work at certain other hosts, but DEC,
not my employer is guaranteeing a home for a while.