[Coco] Anybody willing to put Delphi Msgs on the Web?

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

I think that I am failing to communicate.

I am willing to do the message project, I had great fun years ago using
under powered tools to put some Delphi messages into a database.

I just am looking for some hints that there will be persons that will want
to use the project. And someone to watch and understand so if I disappear
the project would not disappear and it might be possible to use part of it.

The sorting into CoCo, Off Topic and Ignore can be delayed or not done at
all.

The real purpose is to get 8-24 people to actually read some messages and
then report back and vote to give us a sense of should we bother at all with
the messages. If there are people that have looked at the messages already,
then perhaps they could just say a few words about their adventure. My
efforts will not involve reading messages looking for information. I could
do the project with other information.

I feel that I was burned very badly by the huge amount of time I spent
scanning the magazines.

I just do not see any hints that anyone is looking at the magazines.

I think that they are not even available on line yet.

Dennis I understand is willing to host the CoCo archive, but he is not
willing to spend the time reading in the large number of CD's.

He also is not willing to identify what files he has already on his server.
He requires that the duplicated files must be identified and removed.
Perhaps a batch file with a lot of delete commands that he can run after
checking it would be an way to help him and get the archive online. Someone
with a fast connection could do the uploading.

I have many more magazines that most CoCoers have never seen as they were in
the ham radio world.
The rights would need to be checked, a quick search found that only 10 years
ago the business was sold so there may be some one with current rights. Not
a big corporation, just one person who I expect would say yes or no or do
the scanning himself for sale.

I think that there is much more value in the magazines as the articles have
been tied together by the writer and an editor. Reading a magazine cover to
cover is much more satisfying than messages that people have typed quickly
and pressed send. When the Rainbow project is available, I suspect that
there will be many persons that will be reading from cover to cover. Perhaps
we should charge a high price for the archive. Then maybe the magazines will
be read.

That is not to say that there is nothing of  value in the messages. A simple
search will fail to produce anything of value after spending a lot of time.
 I know, I have done that oh so many times.

For the messages to be useful there must be methods that allow finding the
right messages quickly.

I am a great fan of  Lotus Magellan, it was the first program that I loaded
onto my first laptop after the OS. (DOS 3.3)

It has great search capabilities and I still use it most every day.

The find capabilities I consider to be in two parts, the first part building
a list of files that may contain the information desired. The file list may
be quite large, most times larger than what a person would want to read
looking for the desired information.

The second part allows the files (May be many different formats) to be
examined very quickly as viewers are automatically selected that understand
their unique file type format and can present it in a way that it can be
scanned very quickly.

Magellan and KWIC are just some of the places that I have found ways to do
searches faster and much more useful. Some ideas will not pan out and the
project may never be completed. But it would be great fun.

We have been collecting a lot of old CoCo information. I really would like
us to find a way that identifies what is being used so those who have done
the work can feel that they have helped.

Dean Leiber wrote:
>> Hi Stephen,
>>
>> Well I can see you've put alot of thought into this (alot more than I
>> have.) Frankly I doubt that someone will put in the amount of time
>> required to put it in a searchable database, etc, etc.

 As I said, I am willing to do this. The fun part starts after the messages
 are in the databases.

 Stopping at the point when the messages have been read in and could be
 searched using Paradox or other DB programs would mean that the project
 was stopped just after the dog work was done and the fun had not started.

>>> I'm basically
>> shooting for something a little less ambitious myself. I'd settle for
>> organizing the files into some form that some kind of basic message
>> reader (or even some kind of pearl, shell or javascript ) which would let
>> you simply read the messages. Maybe allowing you to look at messages by
>> month/year....something of that order. Perhaps once they're organized,
>> they could be dropped into the DB du jour for searching, etc. If you do
>> some kind of basic message reader, it could be expanded with more
>> features if people were really interested.

Is not what you are wanting already done!

The files all are in text format and ordered in thread order in addition to
time, day, month and year.

There may be some persons that will start at some point and just start
reading messages forward.

They will quickly grow tired of the number of messages that have no
entertainment value at all.

Example: Many times I have seen people quote an entire weeks archive of
messages and just add at the end "Me Too". Often I search a entire post and
cannot find any thing that was added. I could build a huge list of  other
things that will cause people to stop their reading like this.

>> Of course, just dropping the
>> messages into a Word Processor would also work! Not optimal, but better
>> than nothing. Since it is most likely I won't be arranging the files, its
>> basically up to the people running with it to decide. 'Don't look a gift
>> horse in the mouth' and all that other folk wisdom...

>>>
>>> The problems lie elsewhere.
>>>
>>> The first problem is determining that there are sufficient CoCoer's
>>> interested in using the product to warrant the large amount of work and
>>> disk
>>> storage space needed. I remain unconvinced.
>>>
>>> If persons wish to have this project done then a truthful description of
>>> what they have searched for in the past and how they did it needs to be
>>> posted.
>>>
>>> The second is coming up with a product format that sufficient numbers of
>>> CoCoer's can use. Due to the volume of data involved most searches on
>>> the raw data would take way too long. They would only be possible if
>>> Paradox were used, or some other very powerful data base manager which
>>> few CoCoer's
>>> have available.