🚀 go-pugleaf

I wrote:

> In my university there is a discussion going on about how to provide a
> Campus Wide Information Service, and proposals are being considered that
> would involve developing new special software in collaboration with a
> commercial firm.
>  ....
> However, my conjecture is that combining this kind of local information
> service with usenet would be fairly easy (though some of the "articles"
> would have to have a very long life, and a rigid format, e.g. one piece
> of information per line).
>
> So I wonder if anyone on a university or university-like site has
> already done it ...

I have had many replies. Thanks to all, and apologies if I don't
thank everyone individually.

The system that was recommended to me most often is gopher.
World Wide Web was mentioned a few times, and WAIS.

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Examples:

From: nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar)

you should look into WAIS, the Wide Area Information Server, as well
as Gopher - they are both infosystems that are good.

From: Bernd Faerber <bf@rz.uni-sb.de>
Organization: Universitaet des Saarlandes D-W-6600 Saarbruecken, Germany

I would suggest to have a look at "gopher" on the next archive server
round the corner. "gopher" is doing a good job for us.


From: Nigel "R." Ellis <N.R.Ellis@durham.ac.uk>

you could always use NNTP and have a PC based newsreader such a Trumpet.
This package allows the use of mouse etc and is very easy to use.


From: Nigel Metheringham <nigelm@ohm.york.ac.uk>

There seem to be two main contenders - Gopher & WAIS.
I have played with Gopher and it seems like a nice neat system,
>
and the client can run on most any machine.
>
If you have JIPs access, try grabbing a Gopher client, running it on
a machine with access to JIPs and accessing a gopher server in the US
- there should be some mentioned in the bumpf with the server.
Gopher implementations are defintitely available for Mac, PC & NeXT
as well as various Unix tty/X-window implementations.  Also have a
look at the Usenet newsgroup  - alt.gopher


From: Alan Cox <iiitac@pyr.swan.ac.uk>

Talk to city university at a first guess. They have a student system called
'Monochrome' which although basically used for non-serious material
at the moment is a very very powerful system quite capable of handling
presentation of a campus wide information service. I seem to remeber
dg148@city is the email address to talk to.


From: peterson@choctaw.csc.ti.com (Bob Peterson)

  Have you explored what various institutions are doing with Gopher?
(See alt.gopher if you get alt group.)  Gopher provides a menu
structure based on a file tree, supporting long-term visibility of
relatively static information.  Gopher provides easy addition of
information, literally as easy as moving a file into a directory.  I
expect a mail gateway could be implemented to provide control
(auditability/accountability) of posted material, as well as allowing
additions to the hierarchy (sort of like establishing a new newsgroup).
Finally, Gopher can provide gateways to other facilities, e.g., the
indexing offered by the Wide Area Information System (WAIS; see
comp.infosystems.wais).  I see no reason Gopher couldn't offer, on a
single menu, a selection of news reading packages.

  Gopher is available from boombox.micro.umn.edu, the home of Gopher.
On your side of the water, archie shows Gopher archives at
nic.funet.fi, nic.switch.ch, pollux.lu.se, and
sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de.  All these don't have everything, but they
are close by.

  World-Wide Web is a similar package, with better hypertext linking
among documents. WWW requires more document preparation than Gopher.

  Both Gopher and WWW operate as a loose confederation of servers,
i.e., one server can easily contain references to another.  The user
follows these references without knowing anything about machine
boundaries.  This allows, for example, a server focused on science and
located in the science building to establish a reference to a menu of
interesting information offered by the philosophy dept and running on a
completely independent machine.

Bob Peterson             Work: peterson@csc.ti.com              Expressway Site
Texas Instruments        Home: peterson@zgnews.lonestar.org     North Building


From: "E." Hack <Ethan.Hack@ncl.ac.uk>

   Anyway, have you considered
using the Gopher system?  From my experience, as a user rather than a
provider of information, it meets the criteria of user-friendliness
very well, you can provide information in a variety of forms (rather
than just news postings), and it would be considerably more
straightforward to adapt it to your needs than Usenet.

Ethan Hack
Department of Biological and Nutritional Sciences, The University,
Newcastle upon Tyne  NE1 7RU


From: jbotz@orixa.mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Organization: Mount Holyoke College

By itself, NetNews software probably does not make a very good CWIS.
However, I'm dealing with the same kinds of issues here, and I've
settled on using the Internet Gopher as our CWIS, and NetNews as
a conferencing/bulletin board system.  I agree with the point you
raise in your post regarding generality/availability of software for
different levels of users, etc.

In case you haven't seen Gopher, check it out.  It's an extremely
simple protocol for distributed document retrieval and searching.
You can try out a client by telneting to "consultant.micro.umn.edu"
and loging in as "gopher".  Or get the software via ftp from
"boombox.micro.umn.edu"... it's very simple to build, there are
servers for Unix, VMS, and Macintosh, and clients for all those
and PCs.  IMHO Gopher, in all its simplicity, is the best thing
there is for implementing a CWIS, and you get a IWIS (Internet-
wide information system ;-) for free.  Furthermore, there are
gateways between Gopher and most other Internet based info systems
(WAIS, World Wide Web, Netnews, etc.)

As to NetNews user interfaces, for Unix check out "tin" (available
in the alt.sources archives, or ftp from orixa.mtholyoke.edu).  It's
a very easy to use yet powerful newsreader.  Then of course there
are also news readers for the Macintosh and for PCs.

I have distilled our major communications/information services
down to 3 systems... E-Mail, NetNews, and Gopher.  The servers
for all three run on Unix systems, but clients are available for
PCs and Macs, so that a user who doesn't ever want to see a Unix
prompt doesn't have to.
--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
South Hadley, MA, USA        | Snail Mail: J. Botz, 01075-0629



From: "(Arnold Bloemer)" <bloemer@helios.tnt.uni-hannover.dbp.de>

I think the World Wide Web system could give you exactly, what you were
looking for. See my included reply on a similar question.

It would be a nice idea, if you could post your opinion on World Wide Web
after evaluating. I think everybody should know about this wonderful
system. And as more people know about as larger the net will grow.

In the included mail, I mention the www browser and the viola browser.
At the moment there is a bug in viola which makes it impossible to
choose a newsserver. Try www to evaluate that feature. You just have to
set the environment variable NNTPSERVER. By the way, the gateway has the
nice feature, that you can retrieve referenced news via hyperlinks.

.....
Another possibility would be to try the Gopher system. It is a network
of university information systems. And there is a software with which
you can set up your own Gopher. It is also really nice and there are
still a lot of universities on the net. Here is the excerpt from Yanoffs
last list:

Gopher		        telnet consultant.micro.umn.edu or telnet 134.84.132.4
			telnet panda.uiowa.edu or telnet 128.255.63.234
			telnet gdunix.gd.chalmers.se or 129.16.221.40 (SWEDISH)
  Offers:  access to other services, gophers, documents, etc. (Login: gopher)

I like World Wide Web more than Gopher because of the additional hypertext
feature. You can set up an text with arbitrary hyperlinks. And there is a
gateway from World Wide Web to Gopher but not in the other direction.
Best would be to merge both systems and focus on one project. World Wide Web
and Gopher are to similar in there intentions.

But maybe there are other opinions in the discussion WorldWideWeb <-> Gopher.

Dipl.-Ing. Arnold Bloemer	   Universitaet Hannover
				   Institut fuer Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik
				   und Informationsverarbeitung
bloemer@tnt.uni-hannover.dbp.de    Appelstrasse 9A
fax:    +49-511-762-5333           D-3000 Hannover 1
phone:  +49-511-762-5320           Germany

[He provided summaries of previous discussions about this.]


From: Edward Walsh <edw%com.hp.boi.hpdmd48@hpl.hp.co.uk>

Try using tin with C-news.....but find as recent a version as possible.
Ed Walsh


From: gtsi!rich@uunet.UU.net (Richard Lawrence)

>My suspicion is that on top of Usenet software, with a good interface
>for novice users (who would need guidance on traversing a local
>hierarchy of information) one could provide a very powerful system that
>would work on a large number of machines with very little effort and

Yeah, it's called local distribution news.

....
If you're university is dead set on spending money,
why not fund a pretty, very user friendly reader? Actually, lots of
people badmouth rn, but I know many novice users who get along with it.
In my experience thier learning curve diminishes proportionately to the
interest of the program, and most people find UseNet pretty interesting.

>However, my conjecture is that combining this kind of local information
>service with usenet would be fairly easy (though some of the "articles"
>would have to have a very long life, and a rigid format, e.g. one piece
>of information per line).

I don't know how familiar you are with news software, but it's easy as pie
to set up a local only distribution, then add the groups to your site only.

Good luck.
-Rich

From: sw@nan.co.uk (Sak Wathanasin)
Organization: Network Analysis Ltd


....what you suggest is certainly
possible. There are a couple of good newsreaders for the Mac, and I'm
sure there are some for X or SunWindows as well. It's also possible to
have an iconic-based front-end: AppleLink uses a Mac-Finder style
front-end to Geisco, which is "normally" a main-frame-style UI (similar
to "rn", but worse :-). The user sees a number of bulletin board icons
which can be opened by double-clicking to reveal yet more boards etc. I
have an AppleLink account and can demo this. There's no reason why
something similar can't be done for netnews.

Sak Wathanasin
Network Analysis Limited
178 Wainbody Ave South, Coventry CV3 6BX, UK
-- 
Aaron Sloman,
School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England