emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti) (12/03/90)
Archive-name: comp.archives/administrivia/format/1990-12-02 Archive-directory: cs.toronto.edu:/comp.archives/ [128.100.1.65] This posting describes what's in a comp.archives article other than the text that the original author put in it. The Subject: header has an extra thing stuck on the front of it which denotes the newsgroup that the posting originally came from for ease of article searching or killing. The original newsgroups are also preserved intact in the X-Original-Newsgroups line. Occasionally I'll put on a new subject if the old one was particularly uninformative. The Reply-To: and Followup-To: lines are filled out as best I can to point replies back to the original author and followups back to an appropriate newsgroup. There are several "auxiliary" headers that I add on. These cannot ordinarily be hidden by newsreaders. The first is the Archive-name: header. This is intended as a suitable file in which you might store the article using an archive program like "rkive" or others of its ilk. Starting in December 1990, this header is formatted as follows. Note that the dates should sort properly. I do not have the means at this point to guarantee that two articles will not posted with the same Archive-name. Archive-name: category/subcategory/package/yyyy-mm-dd Archive-name: x11/kanji/kterm/1990-12-01 Archive-name: fonts/chinese/crl.nmsu.edu/1990-12-01 I keep a table of package -> category mappings, which might help this stay consistent. The categorization scheme is only as good as the information that I get; what seems to be most helpful in this regard are the periodic comparative reviews of 4-12 programs in the same general area. The Archive: or Archive-directory: header follows. It intended as a complete reference by which you can grab the entire package automatically. Given the vagaries of FTP, there is no guarantee that the thing might not move before you get there, but it should be at worst a good clue. If there is a whole directory full of files to be retrieved, this is noted by an Archive-directory: header in roughly the same format. Archive: host.domain.org:/pub/directory/package-nn.n.tar.Z [128.64.32.16] Archive: expo.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/kterm-4.1.1.tar.Z [18.30.0.212] Archive-directory: host.domain.org:/pub/directory/ [128.64.32.16] Archive-directory: crl.nmsu.edu:/pub/chinese/ [128.123.1.14] If you are a GNU emacs user, the "ange-ftp" package from Archive: tut.cis.ohio-state.edu:/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive/packages/ange-ftp.el.Z [128.146.8.60] will (more or less) let you point to an Archive: reference and retrieve the file without further typing. Work is in progress to come up with tools that you can pipe a comp.archives article into and have it drop into a sensible place. (probably it would be enough to hack on batchftp). The last header is the Reposted-by: header, which lets you know which of the multiple moderators (if there were to be such a thing) was responsible. Also to remind you who is doing the work :-). Any questions on archive formats should go to me. If you are writing tools that archive comp.archives postings or that fetch stuff from them, let me know. Note the address change (effective 1 Dec 1990) to "emv@ox.com" instead of "emv@math.lsa.umich.edu". --Ed Edward Vielmetti moderator, comp.archives emv@ox.com archives@ox.com
emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti) (12/22/90)
Archive-name: comp.archives/administrivia/format/1990-12-21 Archive-directory: cs.toronto.edu:/comp.archives/ [128.100.1.65] This posting describes what's in a comp.archives article other than the text that the original author put in it. The Subject: header has an extra thing stuck on the front of it which notes the newsgroup that the posting originally came from for ease of article searching or killing. The original newsgroups are also preserved intact in the X-Original-Newsgroups line. Occasionally I'll put on a new subject if the old one was particularly uninformative. The Reply-To: and Followup-To: lines are filled out as best I can to point replies back to the original author and followups back to an appropriate newsgroup. There are several "auxiliary" headers that I add on. These cannot ordinarily be hidden by newsreaders. The first is the Archive-name: header. This is intended as a suitable file in which you might store the article using an archive program like "rkive" or others of its ilk. Starting in December 1990, this header is formatted as follows. Note that the dates should sort properly. I do not have the means at this point to guarantee that two articles will not posted with the same Archive-name. Archive-name: category/subcategory/package/yyyy-mm-dd Archive-name: x11/kanji/kterm/1990-12-01 Archive-name: fonts/chinese/crl.nmsu.edu/1990-12-01 I keep a table of package -> category mappings, which helps this stay consistent. The categorization scheme is only as good as the information that I get; what seems to be most helpful in this regard are the periodic comparative reviews of 4-12 programs in the same general area. The Archive: or Archive-directory: header follows. It intended as a complete reference by which you can grab the entire package automatically. Given the vagaries of FTP, there is no guarantee that the thing might not move before you get there, but it should be at worst a good clue. If there is a whole directory full of files to be retrieved, this is noted by an Archive-directory: header in roughly the same format. Archive: host.domain.org:/pub/directory/package-nn.n.tar.Z [128.64.32.16] Archive: expo.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/kterm-4.1.1.tar.Z [18.30.0.212] Archive-directory: host.domain.org:/pub/directory/ [128.64.32.16] Archive-directory: crl.nmsu.edu:/pub/chinese/ [128.123.1.14] The Archive: header may include a wildcard in the file name, suitable for use in an FTP "mget". If anything it will point to too few files rather than too many; i.e. an index file rather than an entire (possibly huge) directory. Be extra cautious when fetching an entire directory, for it may be huge! If you are a GNU emacs user, the "ange-ftp" package from Archive: tut.cis.ohio-state.edu:/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive/packages/ange-ftp.el.Z [128.146.8.60] will let you (more or less) point to an Archive: reference and retrieve the file without further typing. A good tool to have would be one which reads a comp.archives article and issues the proper commands to FTP to fetch the file. Work is in progress on such a thing. The author(s) of the best program available to do this task on 1 May 1991 will receive a prize (yet to be determined). The last header is the Reposted-by: header, which lets you know which of the multiple moderators (if there were to be such a thing) was responsible. Also to remind you who is doing the work :-). Any questions on archive formats should go to me. If you are writing tools that archive comp.archives postings or that fetch stuff from them, let me know. Note the address change (effective 1 Dec 1990) to "emv@ox.com" instead of "emv@math.lsa.umich.edu". --Ed Edward Vielmetti MSEN moderator, comp.archives emv@ox.com (or) archives@ox.com