mayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer) (03/07/89)
Summary: Xwebster is used to look up words in the online copy of Webster's 7th dictionary, stored at SRI-NIC and also available on machines located at Boston U., Indiana U, Purdue U., MIT, Stanford, etc. In order to run xwebster you must have access to a webster server. What's new: The old xwebster program (version 1.01) from the X11r3 contrib tape had some known problems when I released it, as documented in the xwebster.README file. In particular, xwebster(1.01) did not handle webster server disconnects gracefully. Fortunately, Mark Moraes <moraes@csri.toronto.edu> found a way to make it handle server disconnects properly. So now, you can leave xwebster on your screen all the time. When you need to look up a word, xwebster will automatically reconnect you to one of the webster servers you have specified in ~/.Xdefaults Mark Moraes also fixed some stupid errors on my part that caused Xwebster to dump core when running under SunOS 3.5. I didn't notice these problems when testing Xwebster under HPUX 6.21. Moraes added a manpage, an Imake file, and converted Xwebster to work under the R3 Xtoolkit Intrinsics and the R3 HP Xwidgets (from X11r3/contrib/widgets/Xhp/Xw + Martin Friedmann's patch on expo.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/Xhp.patch.works.tar.Z). Now Xwebster should be a kosher X-Consortium program. I'm hoping the powers-that-be include it in the X11r4/clients/xwebster directory and include the HP Xwidgets in X11r4/lib/Xw. This release includes Moraes' enhancements, along with a few bugfixes that I made to Moraes' code, some improvements to Xwebster's robustness, more documentation, etc. Where to get xwebster: I've put all the xwebster files on expo.lcs.mit.edu. They're in the contrib directory: -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 5959 Mar 6 21:52 xwebster.README -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 37916 Mar 6 22:45 xwebster.r3.patch.Z -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 42782 Mar 6 21:57 xwebster.tar.Z Xwebster.r3.patch.Z is a patch that can be applied to the original webster from the directory X11r3/contrib/clients/xwebster. Where to get the webster server: I occasionally get mail on this, so I thought I'd answer now once and for all. The server itself is running at a number of universities and institutes. The code for the server is available from these universities as well. However, I don't think these universities are at liberty to give away the copyrighted dictionary data. If anybody can legally get their hands on the webster's dictionary data, I'd love to know how. I know that NeXT bought the data for their webster's dictionary application. I haven't contacted Merriam-Webster to find out if purchasing the data is possible. Let me know if you've got answers on this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Palo Alto, CA. *
mayer%hplnpm@HPLABS.HP.COM (Niels P. Mayer) (03/08/89)
> From: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton) > Last Friday, the gateway between comp.windows.x and xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu > appears to have broken. > ... > Until this gets tracked down, comp.windows.x readers are encouraged to *mail* > their notes and replies to either of the following addresses: Following Jim Fulton's advice, I'm enclosing my previous announcement to comp.windows.x... see the latter half of this posting. ---------- Also, I wanted to take this opportunity to STAMP OUT AN INTERIM VERSION OF XWEBSTER (1.01) THAT IS FLOATING ABOUT. This happened because of the long mail delays between xpert and comp.windows.x, as well as some misunderstandings between myself, Mark Moraes, and the moderator of comp.windows.x. Here's the poop: I didn't realize that Mark Moraes had "officially" announced the release of a new xwebster when he told me in personal email of his new patches to xwebster. After poking around in his patched version, I noticed some things that I wanted changed and set out to make a new version of xwebster for public release: Xwebster Version 1.10 includes some trivial bugfixes to Moraes' patches, as well as improved functionality and more robust error handling. I placed Xwebster 1.10 on expo.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/xwebster.tar.Z, and announced the existence of the new version of xwebster to comp.windows.x and the comp.sources.x moderator (Mike Wexler): > From: mayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer) > Newsgroups: comp.windows.x > Subject: Announcing XWEBSTER version 1.10 -- A dictionary browser. > Date: 7 Mar 89 04:41:19 GMT Then, just today, much to my surprise, I read postings in comp.sources.x and comp.windows.x indicating that the old version of xwebster (1.01) had been announced and released: > Article 8241 in comp.windows.x: > From: moraes@CSRI.TORONTO.EDU (Mark Moraes) > Subject: xwebster fixes for R3 > Date: 1 Mar 89 07:47:23 GMT > Article 217 in comp.sources.x: > From: mikew@wyse.wyse.com (Mike Wexler) > Subject: v03i034: Webster client, Part01/02 > Date: 7 Mar 89 18:06:59 GMT Unfortunately, I did not submit xweb parts 01 and 02, rather, these were the shar files that Moraes had previously sent to Mike Wexler. > Submitted-by: mayer@hplabs.hp.com (Niels P. Mayer) > Posting-number: Volume 3, Issue 34 > Archive-name: xweb/part01 > ... > Xchar xwebster_version[] = "Xwebster, version 1.01"; ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I guess Wexler assumed that Moraes' shar file was the same as my latest version, or that he hadn't yet received my mail of 3/6/89 when he posted xweb/part0{1,2} to comp.sources.x. These "interim" versions of xwebster are still labelled as "VERSION 1.01" PLEASE IGNORE AND DO NOT PROPOGATE THAT VERSION OF XWEBSTER!! THE CURRENT VERSION OF XWEBSTER IS 1.10. Hopefully, this confusion will get straightened out soon..... ---------- Ok enough versionitis, here's the original announcement: ============================================================================== Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Announcing XWEBSTER version 1.10 -- A dictionary browser. Date: 7 Mar 89 04:41:19 GMT Reply-To: mayer@hplabs.hp.com (Niels Mayer) Distribution: world Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Software Technology Lab, Palo Alto, CA. Summary: Xwebster is used to look up words in the online copy of Webster's 7th dictionary, stored at SRI-NIC and also available on machines located at Boston U., Indiana U, Purdue U., MIT, Stanford, etc. In order to run xwebster you must have access to a webster server. What's new: The old xwebster program (version 1.01) from the X11r3 contrib tape had some known problems when I released it, as documented in the xwebster.README file. In particular, xwebster(1.01) did not handle webster server disconnects gracefully. Fortunately, Mark Moraes <moraes@csri.toronto.edu> found a way to make it handle server disconnects properly. So now, you can leave xwebster on your screen all the time. When you need to look up a word, xwebster will automatically reconnect you to one of the webster servers you have specified in ~/.Xdefaults Mark Moraes also fixed some stupid errors on my part that caused Xwebster to dump core when running under SunOS 3.5. I didn't notice these problems when testing Xwebster under HPUX 6.21. Moraes added a manpage, an Imake file, and converted Xwebster to work under the R3 Xtoolkit Intrinsics and the R3 HP Xwidgets (from X11r3/contrib/widgets/Xhp/Xw + Martin Friedmann's patch on expo.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/Xhp.patch.works.tar.Z). Now Xwebster should be a kosher X-Consortium program. I'm hoping the powers-that-be include it in the X11r4/clients/xwebster directory and include the HP Xwidgets in X11r4/lib/Xw. This release includes Moraes' enhancements, along with a few bugfixes that I made to Moraes' code, some improvements to Xwebster's robustness, more documentation, etc. Where to get xwebster: I've put all the xwebster files on expo.lcs.mit.edu. They're in the contrib directory: -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 5959 Mar 6 21:52 xwebster.README -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 37916 Mar 6 22:45 xwebster.r3.patch.Z -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 42782 Mar 6 21:57 xwebster.tar.Z Xwebster.r3.patch.Z is a patch that can be applied to the original webster from the directory X11r3/contrib/clients/xwebster. Where to get the webster server: I occasionally get mail on this, so I thought I'd answer now once and for all. The server itself is running at a number of universities and institutes. The code for the server is available from these universities as well. However, I don't think these universities are at liberty to give away the copyrighted dictionary data. If anybody can legally get their hands on the webster's dictionary data, I'd love to know how. I know that NeXT bought the data for their webster's dictionary application. I haven't contacted Merriam-Webster to find out if purchasing the data is possible. Let me know if you've got answers on this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Palo Alto, CA. *
mayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer) (03/08/89)
I noticed that an interim version of xwebster version 1.01 has gone out on comp.sources.x. PLEASE IGNORE THAT VERSION. The latest version of Xwebster is 1.10, and is available from expo.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/xwebster.tar.Z, as mentioned in my announcement on comp.windows.x. I've sent the shar files to that version to Mike Wexler, in the hope that he will post it to comp.sources.x. Here's mail I sent to xpert@expo, that sort of explains how all this confusion arose. I'm posting it to comp.windows.x since the xpert<-->comp.windows.x gateway seems to be broken: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu Cc: mikew@wyse.wyse.com, Mark Moraes <moraes@csri.toronto.edu> Subject: Announcing XWEBSTER version 1.10 -- A dictionary browser. Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Software Technology Lab, Palo Alto, CA. X-Mailer: mh6.6 Date: Tue, 07 Mar 89 15:49:20 PST Message-ID: <1296.605317760@hplnpm> From: Niels P. Mayer <mayer@hplnpm> > From: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton) > Last Friday, the gateway between comp.windows.x and xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu > appears to have broken. > ... > Until this gets tracked down, comp.windows.x readers are encouraged to *mail* > their notes and replies to either of the following addresses: Following Jim Fulton's advice, I'm enclosing my previous announcement to comp.windows.x... see the latter half of this posting. ---------- Also, I wanted to take this opportunity to STAMP OUT AN INTERIM VERSION OF XWEBSTER (1.01) THAT IS FLOATING ABOUT. This happened because of the long mail delays between xpert and comp.windows.x, as well as some misunderstandings between myself, Mark Moraes, and the moderator of comp.windows.x. Here's the poop: I didn't realize that Mark Moraes had "officially" announced the release of a new xwebster when he told me in personal email of his new patches to xwebster. After poking around in his patched version, I noticed some things that I wanted changed and set out to make a new version of xwebster for public release: Xwebster Version 1.10 includes some trivial bugfixes to Moraes' patches, as well as improved functionality and more robust error handling. I placed Xwebster 1.10 on expo.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/xwebster.tar.Z, and announced the existence of the new version of xwebster to comp.windows.x and the comp.sources.x moderator (Mike Wexler): > From: mayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer) > Newsgroups: comp.windows.x > Subject: Announcing XWEBSTER version 1.10 -- A dictionary browser. > Date: 7 Mar 89 04:41:19 GMT Then, just today, much to my surprise, I read postings in comp.sources.x and comp.windows.x indicating that the old version of xwebster (1.01) had been announced and released: > Article 8241 in comp.windows.x: > From: moraes@CSRI.TORONTO.EDU (Mark Moraes) > Subject: xwebster fixes for R3 > Date: 1 Mar 89 07:47:23 GMT > Article 217 in comp.sources.x: > From: mikew@wyse.wyse.com (Mike Wexler) > Subject: v03i034: Webster client, Part01/02 > Date: 7 Mar 89 18:06:59 GMT Unfortunately, I did not submit xweb parts 01 and 02, rather, these were the shar files that Moraes had previously sent to Mike Wexler. > Submitted-by: mayer@hplabs.hp.com (Niels P. Mayer) > Posting-number: Volume 3, Issue 34 > Archive-name: xweb/part01 > ... > Xchar xwebster_version[] = "Xwebster, version 1.01"; ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I guess Wexler assumed that Moraes' shar file was the same as my latest version, or that he hadn't yet received my mail of 3/6/89 when he posted xweb/part0{1,2} to comp.sources.x. These "interim" versions of xwebster are still labelled as "VERSION 1.01" PLEASE IGNORE AND DO NOT PROPOGATE THAT VERSION OF XWEBSTER!! THE CURRENT VERSION OF XWEBSTER IS 1.10. Hopefully, this confusion will get straightened out soon..... ---------- Ok enough versionitis, here's the original announcement: [deleted, since you comp.windows.x people have seen it]