Subject: FAQ and Search on CCL

From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 14:13:18 -0500 (EST)

Dear,

As to CCL FAQ and searches...

FAQ... I would welcome it as a community project...
My problem is with time and the staff. The students who help me with CCL
are computer science students, not the Computational Chemistry oriented.
So I cannot expect them to help me with Computational Chemistry.

But you can...

When You see a FAQ question, and you respond to it in more or less
"closed" form (i.e., not with a one liner, but something which will
help a person who is not a guru), please copy it to me ([email-masked])
with a note "Add to FAQ" or upload it to incoming of our
anonymous ftp site:
    http://www.ccl.net/chemistry/aboutccl/contributing/
After I have some critical mass of these FAQ topics/answers, I will put it
on the web. I may even create a web form for FAQ submissions later.
Please help. I am short handed so do not expect me to act as an
editor... Just put the stuff in a closed form, so I can pass it to
a student who does not know what it is, and he/she can edit it into
the FAQ tree. I really think that this would improve the quality of the list
and discussions in general. It would be best, if you could make these
contributions in HTML. All the links sould be also displayed, e.g.:

<A HRER="http://www.ccl.net/chemistry">http://www.ccl.net/chemistry</A>

The format can be as:

Author: your name and e-mail address

Date: the current date

Topic: Keywords relevant to the topic below

Question: The precise question to which you provide answer 

Answer: The gory details, but less than a few pages. If answer needs more
        then few pages of narrative, it is not an answer to a Question,
        it is a review (which I always welcome and you have some o
        them under "Document Archives"). You can of course have
        some examples or accompanying files for the FAQ, please attach
        them. The other option is, make it a tar or zip, and upload it
        to the incoming directory on ftp.ccl.net and let me know.

If you have a better idea, send it to me, and I will choose the thing
which best fits the overall structure of CCL.
Do not expect answers soon, since I will be at Sanibel for a week.

SEARCHES....

Sorry... Our htdig search started to produce indices which want to be
larger than 2Gigs of space. Of course, a no, no under older Linices
which does not like files larger than 2Gigs (yes, we are upgrading slowly). 
So, we have to find the solution. In the meantime use the Regular Expression
search. Sorry, it is slow (and often dies), but this is what we have at this
moment. My students are looking at alternatives/solutions.

Thank you for your patience...

Jan
[email-masked]

Jan K. Labanowski            |    phone: 614-292-9279,  FAX: 614-292-7168
Ohio Supercomputer Center    |    Internet: [email-masked] 
1224 Kinnear Rd,             |    http://www.ccl.net/chemistry.html
Columbus, OH 43212-1163      |    http://www.ccl.net/

---

From: "Jesus M. Castagnetto" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 13:23:17 -0800 (PST)

Jan's points on time and resources are correct, and his ideas
on contributions to the FAQ the way to go.

I know of two possible ways of automating the collection of
FAQ questions and answers:

1) Using a FAQ-O-Matic system. There are systems like this that use
Perl/Python/Java/PHP with and without a database backend, so people
can put a FAQ question and/or answer, and comments can later be added
by other people in the list.

The *canonical* FAQ-O-Matic is at:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jonh/ff-serve/cache/1.html

and uses Perl and rcs to kep track of changes.

The FAQ-O-Matic takes a hierarchical approach and has its own search
scripts. There are ports of this package to other scripting languages.

2) A hosted knowledge base approach. From the point of view of the user it
will be similar to (1), but the logistics in the server side are different.
Also, this not necessarily needs to be hosted/maintained by Jan. There are
places that can host a FAQ/knowledge base, and Jan can be the moderator,
with the capacity to remove improper postings.

For an example of (2), see the URL:

	http://www.faqts.com/knowledge-base/index.phtml/fid/51/

which is a knowledge base for PHP and related web stuff, and it is hoste
at FAQTS.com, which also allow the creation of similar knowledge bases
for free, see: 

	http://www.faqts.com/index.phtml

If we had a system like this, then the FAQ creation will be a community
effort, and will not tax (too much) our good friend Jan.

Regards.

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Jan Labanowski wrote:

> Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 14:13:18 -0500 (EST)
> From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
> Subject: CCL:FAQ and Search on CCL
> 
> Dear,
> 
> -= This is automatically added to each message by mailing script =-
> [email-masked] -- To Everybody    |   [email-masked] -- To Admins
> [email-masked] -- HELP CHEMISTRY or HELP SEARCH
> [email-masked] -- archive search    |    Gopher: gopher.ccl.net 70
> Ftp: ftp.ccl.net  |  WWW: http://www.ccl.net/chemistry/   | Jan: [email-masked]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

--
Jesus M. Castagnetto <[email-masked]> - "Ken Zen Ichi-nyo"
Program Project:   http://www.scripps.edu/research/metallo/ 
Metalloprotein DB: http://metallo.scripps.edu/
Pilot Stuff: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1059/