[Ann] Mailing list archive - a new home

[1/7] from: SunandaDH::aol::com at: 14-Jan-2004 20:13

THE SITUATION This Mailing List hasn't had a good archive for a while: --Escribe stopped listing messages in the middle of last year --REBOL.net exposes only the last month or so Graham Chiu took the initiative, and a great big step to rectifying that, when he announced, a few weeks ago, the availability of the archive back to 2000 on his site: http://203.79.110.37/rebolml/ But unfortunately, Graham's website does not have the bandwidth to allow search engine spiders to index the archive, so the messages would remain invisible to Google and others. REBOL is already too much of a well-kept secret! THE ANNOUNCEMENT Graham's generously given us his archive, we've nicked his design, and picked over his brain with endless questions ("How did we get messages from the year 2024!?") and generally been very patient and helpful while we've transferred the archive to REBOL.org. Take a look please at: http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-index.r and let me know what needs fixing. THE FINE PRINT Not everything is finished yet: 1. The Date Index page that shows the number of messages per month should take you to an index page showing the titles of each message for that month. Right now, it takes you direct to the first message. 2. The archive is complete only up to 24-dec-2003. It is unlikely to have more recent messages added for a couple of weeks. After that, it should stay in step with the ML. 3 No link yet from the main REBOL.org page. We'll add that when it's official. 4. No on-site search engine yet. That'll be a few weeks yet. LIBRARY MEMBERS You don't need to be a library member to read the ML archive -- it's a public resource. But, if you are, and you are logged on, then your scrolling preference (how many items per page) is used when showing the various index lists. Thanks again to Graham for getting this started, Sunanda<

[2/7] from: brett:codeconscious at: 15-Jan-2004 12:59

Very nice. Well done guys! Regards, Brett.

[3/7] from: jason:cunliffe:verizon at: 15-Jan-2004 0:28

> http://203.79.110.37/rebolml/

Bravo !! Thanks guys... can't wait till you add search etc. -Jason<

[4/7] from: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 15-Jan-2004 8:49

Jason Cunliffe wrote:

>>http://203.79.110.37/rebolml/ >> >> > >Bravo !! > >Thanks guys... can't wait till you add search etc. >

the question is, if it would not be easier to resubscribe to escribe? It has common interface, good search, is known etc. -pekr-

[5/7] from: AJMartin:orcon at: 24-Jan-2004 11:50

pekr wrote:

> the question is, if it would not be easier to resubscribe to escribe? It

has common interface, good search, is known etc. I tried doing that but... Quote from http://www.escribe.com/: We only carry mailing lists that request this service (by the mailing list owner only). It looks like that's a job for Carl, unfortunately. -- Andrew J Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://www.rebol.it/Valley/ http://valley.orcon.net.nz/ http://Valley.150m.com/

[6/7] from: SunandaDH:aol at: 15-Jan-2004 10:12

Thanks to Brett and Jason and Gerard and Pekr for the replies. A couple of comments: Jason:

> can't wait till you add search etc.

This may be halfway usable in a couple of weeks. There's a three-stage "plan": 1. Link to the ML archive from REBOL.org to make this new feature live. I'll do that in the next day or two, assuming I don't get any shop-stopping bug reports. 2. Within a week or two, Google should have found and indexed all the content (we get good service fom Google: new scripts are usually in its index within three days). This'll mean you'll be able to use Google to search the archive.... Example: find individual scripts that contain the words parse and cgi: parse cgi site:www.rebol.org inurl:ml-display-message Example: find threads that contain 'wait but not 'binary wait -binary site:www.rebol.org inurl:ml-display-thread 3. Then put up a find box and use the Google SOAP API to run the queries and display the results in Library look'n'feel. Pekr:

> the question is, if it would not be easier to resubscribe > to escribe? It has common interface, good search, is known etc.

I don't know why escribe stopped taking the list, or if they will restart it (there is a note on their site saying "no new lists" so they may be winding down this side of their business). But even if they do, we have some features they don't: 1. An intelligently alphabetical index of threads 2. Intelligent removal of bottom-quoting and advertising lines -- making it far less of a pain when reading a whole thread (far less unwanted repetition) 3. Generally faster, in my experience. Plus we've got a few ideas for things to make it even better -- I hope they will be rolled out over the next few months. More comments are welcome, please, Sunanda<

[7/7] from: jason:cunliffe:verizon at: 15-Jan-2004 13:10

Good news :-) Escribe interface sucks. Never a great help to Rebol either. Yes rebol driven archive with good Google hooks seems like an excellent remedy. thanks - Jason