daleske@cbnews.ATT.COM (John D. Daleske) (03/22/89)
Our group uses notes across many machines for keeping everyone up-to-date on activity. The latest version we have is from early 1984. Are there any more recent versions distributed? I will be trying to contact someone at the University of Illinois, but would also appreciate any other leads. Thanks much! John Daleske att!cblpn!jdd Columbus 0B117 614-860-2968
shilling@pinto.gatech.edu (John Shilling) (03/22/89)
Notes was written by a fellow named Ray Essick. I recently asked him
about it and he said that you should be able to FTP a copy from
a.cs.uiuc.edu (look in /pub/Notes/). There should be compressed and
uncompressed versions of the tar image.
Rumor has it that there are some folks at HP doing work with
notesfiles. They have done a lot of "newsifying" to the code to make
it a better usenet citizen. Other than that I don't think that there
is anyone updating/enhancing it (Ray has long since graduated).
John J. Shilling
School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers}!gatech!shilling
Internet: shilling@gatech.edujthomp@texsun.Central.Sun.COM (Jim Thompson Sun Dallas IR) (03/30/89)
In article <18218@gatech.edu> shilling@pinto.UUCP (John Shilling) writes: >Notes was written by a fellow named Ray Essick. I recently asked him >about it and he said that you should be able to FTP a copy from >a.cs.uiuc.edu (look in /pub/Notes/). There should be compressed and >uncompressed versions of the tar image. Notes was originally written by Rob Kolstad and Ray Essick, and pre-dates 'news' as a bbs-type system. Ray Essick is now with Prisma. (essick@prisma.com, or uunet!prisma!essick), as is Rob. (kolstad@prisma.com). Notes is also available in the comp.software.unix archives. uunet.uu.net:~ftp/news/Notes.tar.Z pick up uunet.uu.net:~ftp/comp.sources.unix/volume10/notes-mod.pch.Z While you're there. >Rumor has it that there are some folks at HP doing work with >notesfiles. They have done a lot of "newsifying" to the code to make >it a better usenet citizen. Other than that I don't think that there >is anyone updating/enhancing it (Ray has long since graduated). Rich Salz (rsalz@pineapple.bbn.com) has also done quite a bit of work on 'notes'. The HP guys are doing some work as well. Whilst at Convex, we did some work to support an internal version that was used to record revisions control information, amoung other things. Private conversations with Ray tend to make me belive that at this point, even Ray would like a notes-like interface to news. If only to avoid the notes<->news gateway issues. I understand that Larry Wall's as-yet-unreleased version of 'rn' will support such 'alternative' interfaces. (That is a rumor, 2nd hand..) I won't express my opinion of notes, but my refusal to work on/with it cost me job offer once. Suffice it to say that I prefer news. Jim Thompson jthomp@central.sun.com "I woudn't recommend sex, drugs, or insanity Network Engineering for everyone, but they've always worked for me." Sun Microsystems -- Hunter S. Thompson
williamt@athena1.Sun.COM (William A. Turnbow) (03/31/89)
How does notes differ from news? Is it based on the the version that runs on PLATO (I remember rob from PLATO days at U of I. which is why I ask).
ria@PacBell.COM (Richard I Anderson) (03/31/89)
In article <421@texsun.Central.Sun.COM> jthomp@texsun.Central.Sun.COM (Jim Thompson Sun Dallas IR) writes: >In article <18218@gatech.edu> shilling@pinto.UUCP (John Shilling) writes: >>Rumor has it that there are some folks at HP doing work with >>notesfiles. They have done a lot of "newsifying" to the code to make >>it a better usenet citizen. Other than that I don't think that there >>is anyone updating/enhancing it (Ray has long since graduated). > >Rich Salz (rsalz@pineapple.bbn.com) has also done quite a bit of work >on 'notes'. The HP guys are doing some work as well. Whilst at >Convex, we did some work to support an internal version that was used >to record revisions control information, amoung other things. > >Private conversations with Ray tend to make me belive that at this >point, even Ray would like a notes-like interface to news. If only to >avoid the notes<->news gateway issues. I understand that Larry Wall's >as-yet-unreleased version of 'rn' will support such 'alternative' >interfaces. (That is a rumor, 2nd hand..) > A couple of years or so ago, I revised the notesfile user interface to reduce the number of difficulties users would encounter while using a notesfile. Although I considered the original notesfile user interface superior to that of rn - particularly for users with little experience with UNIX (which describes the population for which my revision was intended and which continues to use notesfiles quite extensively), users benefited from several screen additions/revisions, command revisions/eliminations, etc. More changes were needed than were made, but ... Sorry, but I can't distribute the modified code. However, I will entertain questions about the nature of the revisions I made (just don't expect a rapid response - I'm VERY busy and its been a long time since I did this work). R. I. Anderson Human Factors Consultant Pacific Bell 2600 Camino Ramon, Room 2E850 (415)823-3715 San Ramon, CA 94583 ria@pbhyg.PacBell.COM
shilling@pinto.gatech.edu (John Shilling) (04/03/89)
> How does notes differ from news? Is it based on the the version that > runs on PLATO (I remember rob from PLATO days at U of I. which is why > I ask). Yes, it was originally based on the PLATO version. I am not sure how the current version relates to the PLATO version (but, for instance, it does not limit the number of responses to 99). John J. Shilling School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers}!gatech!shilling Internet: shilling@gatech.edu
skrenta@eecs.nwu.edu (Richard Skrenta) (04/04/89)
We're running Notes here at Northwestern. It was my first introduction to Usenet, and I was surprised to learn that everyone didn't use it :-) I tried other newsreaders, but they seemed to operate pretty one-dimensionally, and I felt like I was 'blind' in a group without the Notes index page. (This isn't a flame against rn and such. I suppose a large part of preference is what you learn first) I wanted something like Notes on my Xenix box, but Notes proved too difficult for me to port. It also has some problems, as it isn't fully up-to-date with other news software. So, I wrote my own Notes-like newsreader, called Tass, which uses the standard netnews database. I'm still working on it; it's on a few Xenix sites around here (and sort-of on a Sun) being tested. It doesn't post, it doesn't support kill files, and it doesn't have a sequencer (yet). But if you like the Notes index page, it's a great newsreader. It's also fairly simple to learn, so non computer types can enjoy the net too. I've been told that Tass doesn't support enough features to be a production quality newsreader. Also, I've heard rumors of super-extensible newsreaders in the works which could emulate the entire Notes interface with some config files. However, I think enough people might benefit from Tass to make it worth distributing (possibly in alt.sources?) Anyone interested? Rich Skrenta -- skrenta@eecs.nwu.edu