[gopher] ANN: Gopher Comprehensive Index

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to comp.infosystems.gopher as well.

Wanted to let y'all know about this:

gopher://quux.org/1/Archives/index

Currently, it is a by-author and by-title index of all of Project
Gutenberg, the entire Wiretap Library, and most of the Quux.org
collections.  I am working to extend it to also include the Online
Books Initiative, the ETEXT project, the ACM Forum on Risks to the
Public in Computers and Related Systems, and various other
publications.

It is under heavy development and will probably be rewritten to use a
database backend shortly.

One technical detail may be of interest to people running gopher
servers.  All of the gopher menus are implemented as *files*, not
directories on the UMN gopherd side.  So, for instance:

gopher://gopher.quux.org:70/1/Archives/index/by-title/0.dir

is actually a file called 0.dir on the server.  It contains the raw
gopher0 menu data.

The indexes are made by parsing files for the Gutenberg Project
(GUTINDEX.ALL) and the Wiretap Library (.files) to generate output in
a single, unified form.  Another program then runs on this output to
generate the database in gopherspace.  Other items are hand-added to
the unified intermediary form, such as the Quux.org collections, which
also get merged in at the end.  The software is currently being
largely rewritten (it's derived from the software on gutenberg.org,
which is GPLd.)  When it is more or less in a stable state, I'll be
posting it in CVS.

Also, I am looking for "waisindex".  Anyone have it?

-- John

-- 
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>                       www.complete.org
Sr. Software Developer, Progeny Linux Systems, Inc.    www.progenylinux.com
#include <std_disclaimer.h>                     <jgoerzen@progenylinux.com>