libes@cme.nist.gov (Don Libes) (01/21/91)
In article <19074@shlump.nac.dec.com> lan_csse@netrix.nac.dec.com (CSSE LAN Test Account) writes: >In article <9101150148.AA22136@uc.msc.edu> rusty@WIN1.IMS.ABB.COM ("Rusty Rowell") writes: >>> ... Is the high cost of standards >>> impeding efforts to adopt those standards? Do you know less about OSI >>> because you can't readily (cheaply) obtain standards specifications? >> > ... In addition, I'd like to point out the real value in >being able to use tools like grep on the RFCs; this is impossible with >the OSI documents. Since they rarely have a very useful index, you sort >of have to just know where to find something, or do a linear search. >It'd be pretty easy to answer such questions if I could run a program >to chew up the documents and spit out interesting portions. We're now >well into the age of electronic text-processing; when is ISO going to >join the rest of the world? (At least for networking standards? ;-) One of my coworkers (Sandy Ressler) had a summer-student digitize a huge standard (CALS, I think). The scanner recovered almost all of the text correctly. He stored it on a Mac and made a little Hypercard stack as a wrapper to access it, although of course, you can bypass that. He added some links by hand to show what could be done, but hypercard alone is sufficient to do basic searching. Also, from each card, you can click on a button which takes you to the original digitized sample. You can also make annotations that other people on the network can see. Last month, he pressed the whole thing onto a CD-ROM and gave out free samples at the recent CALS conference. I think the hardest part of the project was making sure the disc could be read by both DOS and Macs! Anyway, it just shows you what can be done with a week of scanning and cheap student labor. It's rather silly that he couldn't start from a machine-readable copy in the first place, but as we all know that is rather typical when it comes to standards. (Although in this case, I believe CALS is not copyrighted.) You might consider this solution if you REALLY want to do on-line searching through standards (and you don't want to wait 5 years for the standards bodies to come around.) Unfortunately, I don't recall where he has published this work, but it is referred to as "hyperstandard". The project seems to have been well received and is continuing. Don Libes libes@cme.nist.gov ...!uunet!cme-durer!libes