Information Retrieval List Digest 100 (January 31, 1992)
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-100

IRLIST Digest
January 31, 1992
Volume IX, Number 4
Issue 100
**********************************************************
I.   NOTICES
     B. Publications Announcements
        1. Scientific Database Bulletin Board
     C. Miscellaneous
        1. Seminar: Research Directions in Next Generation
           Database Systems
        2. Release of Hyperbole V2.02
**********************************************************
I. NOTICES
I.B.1.
Fr: RHADDAD@bss3.umd.edu
Re: Scientific Database Research

                 Scientific Database Bulletin Board

The Scientific Database Bulletin Board service announces that it
will be available on Jan 24th, 1992 to all interested
participants. The Bulletin Board's purpose is to disseminate
information about scientific database management technology,
encourage collaboration and communication among scientists, and
within the next two years publish a refereed electronic Journal
of Scientific Database Research.

The Bulletin Board is open to all. The general public may access
the system through the Internet system. The 'telnet' command
followed by the command 'open scid3b.eid.anl.gov' will provide a
prompted login sequence. Public access will be available with a
response 'public' to both the login and password prompts. Larger
amounts of material, including reports and software, will be
available to another class of users, subscribers. To become a
subscriber, a person can select an option on the Bulletin Board,
leaving name, address and institutional affiliation.  The
additional information, available through a file transfer
protocol, will be available by leaving a message for the system
operator or sending electronic mail to
'editor@scid3b.eid.anl.gov'. Subscribers can contribute to the
debate in conferences/forums.

The Bulletin Board will start with an initial set of contributory
material and will grow in size and features as submissions are
received.  The initial set of public topics are:

1) General News, Announcements and Subscription Service
2) Schedule: Conferences, Books, and Articles
3) Reviews: Conferences, Books, Articles, Data Collection and SW
4) Standards: Data, Database, Data Communication and Data Descriptions
5) Directory of Data Sets and Sources
6) Directory of Researchers and Topics of Interest
7) Issues and their Taxonomy

In addition Subscribers will be allowed to access to:

8) Conference/Forum Menu: Topics of Interest and Debates
9) Directory of Available Software
10) Data Visualization (scheduled for 1993)

Those interested in the issues discussed in the Bulletin Board
should examine item 7. White papers on the issues are solicited.
They should be limited to two pages and sent via e-mail to the
editor (see above).  They will be posted to the conference
bulletin board for the appropriate issues forum. If new issues
are being raised, the white paper will be put into the 'new
issues' forum.

Conferences/Forums will also become the means of collecting
articles intended for peer review and eventual publication.
Persons interested in becoming editors for the Bulletin Board,
with a view to joining the list of contributing editors of the
Journal in 1993, should send electronic mail to the editor.

Participation in this effort is solicited from all scientists and
researchers in natural, social, and information sciences.
**********
I.C.1.
Fr: Next Generation DB Systems <dbsem@otl.scu.edu>
Re: Research Directions in Next Generation Database Systems

Seminar: "Research Directions in Next Generation Database Systems"

Object Technology Laboratory at Santa Clara University is
organizing a series of seminars on research directions in next
generation database systems. The seminars will focus on object
bases, multimedia informations systems, main memory databases,
heterogeneous distributed multidatabase systems, and advanced
data intensive applications. There exists a significant amount of
interest in these topics, and we believe that the seminars will
serve database researchers, developers, and users community in
Silicon Valley.

We welcome the participation as speakers and audiences from both
academia and industry. For additional info, and inclusion in our
electronic mailing list contact DBsem@otl.scu.edu

The seminars will be held every Wednesday from 4pm to 5pm in Room
326 (EC326), Engineering Center Building, School of Engineering
at Santa Clara University.

The first seminar has been scheduled for January 22th. Direction
to EC326 and free parking, title, abstract and information about
speaker are forthcoming.

Mohammad Ketabchi
Witold Litwin
Emmanuel Saint-Loubert
**********
I.C.2
Fr: Bob Weiner <rsw@BROWNCS)
Re: Announcement of first public release of Hyperbole, V2.02.

This message contains excerpts from the Hyperbole README file
which describe what Hyperbole is and how to obtain it for free
use.  Be sure to obtain the distribution and browse the
documentation before you post ANY followups to this message,
since many of your questions may be answered therein.

Hyperbole contains a mouse-based interface to the GNU Emacs WAIS
browser.  A direct manipulation interface for GNU Info manual
browsing.  And a number of other information retrieval features
based around its open hypertext model.

           Outline
================================
* Beta Tester Quotes
* What is Hyperbole?
* How to Obtain
================================

* Beta Tester Quotes

 "In general, Hyperbole is an embeddable, highly extensible hypertext
  tool.  As such, I find it very useful. As it stands now, Hyperbole is
  particularly helpful for organizing ill-structured or loosely coupled
  information, in part because there are few tools geared for this purpose.
  Hyperbole also possesses a lot of potentials in supporting a wider
  spectrum of structuredness, ranging from unstructured to highly
  structured environments, as well as structural changes over time.

  Major Uses:

  * Menu interface to our own Epoch-based collaborative support environment
    called CoReView: This interface brings together all top-level user
    commands into a single partitioned screen, and allows the end user to
    interact with the system using simple mouse-clicking instead of the
    meta-x key.

  * Gateway to internet resources: this includes links to major Internet
    archive sites of various types of information. Links are made at both
    directory and file levels.

  * Alternative directory organizer: The hierarchical nature of the Unix
    file system sometimes makes it difficult to find things quickly and
    easily using directory navigational tools such as dired. Hyperbole
    enables me to create various "profile" views of my directory tree, with
    entries in these views referring to files anywhere in the hierarchy.

  * Organizing and viewing online documentation: using Hyperbole along with
    Hyper-man and Info makes it truly easy to look up online documentation.

  * Other desktop organization tasks: including links to various mail
    folders, saved newsgroup conversation threads, online note-taker,
    emacs-command invocations, etc."
				    	-- Dadong Wan

 "Hyperbole is the first hyper-link system I've run across that is
  actually part of the environment I use regularly, namely Emacs. The
  complete flexibility of the links is both impressive and expected -- the
  idea of making the link itself programmable is clever, and given that one
  assumes the full power of emacs.  Being able to send email with buttons
  in it is a very powerful capability.  Using ange-ftp mode, one can make
  file references "across the world" as easily as normal file references."
				        -- Mark Eichin

 "The Hyperbole system provides a nice interface to exploring corners of
  Unix that I didn't know existed before."
					-- Craig Smith

* What is Hyperbole?

Hyperbole is an open, efficient hypertext system that can be used for
everyday work on any UNIX platform supported by GNU Emacs.  Hyperbole
consists of three parts:

   1.  an interactive hypertext management interface which anyone can use;

   2.  a set of programming library classes for system developers who
       want to integrate Hyperbole with another user interface or as a
       back-end to a distinct system.  (All of Hyperbole is written in
       Lisp for ease of modification.  Although Hyperbole is a
       prototype, it has been engineered for real-world usage and is
       well structured.)

   3.  A set of hyper-button-action types that provides core hypertext
       and other behaviors.  Users can make simple changes to button
       types and those familiar with Emacs Lisp can quickly prototype
       and deliver new types.

A Hyperbole user works with hypertext buttons; he may create, modify,
move or delete buttons.  Each button performs a specific action, such as
link to a file or execute a UNIX shell command.

Presently, there are two distinct categories of Hyperbole buttons:
explicit buttons (the ones that Hyperbole creates) and implicit buttons
(buttons created and managed by other programs or embedded within the
structure of a document and recognized contextually by Hyperbole).
Explicit Hyperbole buttons may be embedded within any type of text file.

Hyperbole buttons may be clicked upon with a mouse to activate them or
to describe their actions.  Thus, a user can always check how a button
will act before activating it.  Buttons may also be activated from a
keyboard.  (In fact, all Hyperbole operations, including menu usage, may
be performed from any standard character terminal interface, so one need
not be anchored to a workstation all day).

Hyperbole does not enforce any particular hypertext or information
management model, but instead allows you to organize your information in
large or small chunks as you see fit.  Some of its most important
features include:

    Buttons may link to information or may execute procedures, such as
    starting or communicating with external programs;

    Buttons may be embedded within electronic mail messages;

    Other hypertext and information retrieval systems may be
    encapsulated under a Hyperbole user interface (a number of samples
    are provided).

Typical Hyperbole applications include:

    personal information management
       Overlapping link paths provide a variety of views into an
       information space.

       A search facility locates buttons in context and permits quick
       selection.

    documentation browsing
       Embed cross-references in your favorite documentation format.

       Add a point-and-click interface to existing documentation.

       Link code and design documents.  Jump to the definition of an
       identifier from its use within code or its reference within
       documentation.

    help/training systems
       Create tutorials with embedded buttons that show students how
       things work while explaining the concepts, e.g. an introduction
       to UNIX commands.  This technique can be much more effective than
       descriptions alone.

    archive managers
       Supplement programs that manage archives from incoming
       information streams by having them add topic-based buttons that
       link to the archive holdings.  Users can then search and create
       their own links to archive entries.

* How to Obtain

Hyperbole is available across the Internet via anonymous ftp.  Do not send
requests to have it mailed to you since it won't be.  Instead have another
party who has Internet access obtain it for the both of you.

A server which sends the Hyperbole distribution in response to mail
requests may be put into service sometime in the first quarter of 1992.
The Free Software Foundation has expressed interest in distributing
Hyperbole as a separate add-on to GNU Emacs, once Hyperbole reaches a
stable point of maturation, so you may eventually be able to get it from
them.  Here is how to obtain it from the Brown softre archive:

Move to a directory below which you want the 'hyperbole' directory to
be created.  Unpacking the Hyperbole archive will create this
directory and place all of the files below it.

   cd <LOCAL-LISP-DIR>

Ftp to wilma.cs.brown.edu  (Internet Host ID = 128.148.31.66):

   prompt> ftp wilma.cs.brown.edu

Login as 'anonymous' with your own <user-id>@<site-name> as a password.

   Name (wilma.cs.brown.edu:rsw): anonymous
   331 Guest login ok, send EMAIL address (e.g. user@host.domain) as password.
   Password:
   230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.

Move to the Hyperbole directory:

   ftp> cd pub/hyperbole

Set your transfer mode to binary:

   ftp> bin
   200 Type set to I.

Turn off prompting:

   ftp> prompt
   Interactive mode off.

Either choose from the files with a 'dir' command or retrieve them all
(the individual files are also included in the tar archive):

   ftp> mget *tar.Z

Close the ftp connection:

   ftp> quit
   221 Goodbye.

Unpack the *tar.Z archive:

   uncompress *tar.Z; tar xvf *tar

See the README file for the straightforward installation instructions
and other information.

The Hyperbole Manual is included in three forms:
    "hypb.info"       - online version
     hypb.ps          - Postscript form
    "hypb.texinfo"    - source form
**********************************************************
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