jimr@maths.su.oz.au (Jim Richardson) (09/09/90)
An archive of the comp.sys.apollo newsgroup is available by anonymous FTP from
maths.su.oz.au (129.78.68.2). Login under username "ftp", giving your email
address as password. Access is also available via MHSnet and ACSnet for
Australian .oz sites.
The file README.FIRST in directory comp.sys.apollo gives details of the organ-
ization of the archive, which goes back to November 1989.
There are index files, which contain the following fields from each article:
From Subject Summary Keywords
Message-ID References Date
I hope that these indices will be useful to people wanting to search through
the wealth of information in the archive for answers to questions that have
been discussed in the newsgroup in the past. At present, the index files take
up about 500 kilobytes (or 200 when compressed), so it may be feasible for you
to keep copies of the indices permanently on-line at your site. You can then
search them at will, and retrieve relevant groups of articles by FTP when you
need them.
SUGGESTIONS FOR POSTING ARTICLES:
Here are some suggestions to think about when you are posting articles to
the newsgroup. Their aim is to help keep the archive complete and its
indices as useful as possible.
1) Always use distribution "world" -- otherwise the article may not
reach Australia where the archive is kept. Remember that Apollo
users form a world-wide community, on at least five continents.
The only case I can think of where it might be sensible to restrict
distribution to a local geographical area is for articles offering
second-hand equipment for sale.
2) Make sure the Subject line is appropriate. Change it when following
up if the topic of discussion has drifted.
3) Specify articles you are responding to in the References line. Some
news-posting software does this reliably; in other cases you need
to assist manually.
4) Use the Keywords line for additional important keywords not already
present in the Subject line.
5) Use the Summary line to indicate very briefly what the overall point
of your article is, or how it contributes to an ongoing discussion.
People accessing the archive by FTP from outside Australia are asked to observe
the traffic restrictions given in the README.FIRST file, so as to lessen the
load on the over-worked Australia-US satellite link.
See the README file in the top directory for a description of other HP/Apollo-
related material available by FTP from maths.su.oz.au.
--
Jim Richardson
Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Internet: jimr@maths.su.oz.au Phone: +61 2 692 2232 FAX: +61 2 692 4534