NNTP-Article: 27607 of sci.image.processing Path: news.orst.edu!ruby.oce.orst.edu!skyking.oce.orst.edu!stanley From: stanley@skyking.oce.orst.edu (John Stanley) Newsgroups: sci.image.processing Subject: sci.image.processing answers (FAQ) Digest Supersedes: <5h7uqu$4sr@news.orst.edu> Date: 25 Mar 1997 20:47:06 GMT Organization: Oregon State University Lines: 183 Message-ID: <859311900.AA12345@oce.orst.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ruby.oce.orst.edu X-no-archive: yes Originator: root@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU Last-modified: 22 Jan 97 Topics: Why is there no Frequently Asked Questions list? Where is the archive, and how do I get to it? How to get gopher. How to search for followups to an article. How to determine the start of a thread. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Why is there no Frequently Asked Questions list? That's a good question. For there to be a list, someone needs to go through all the articles to see what is talked about the most. That takes time. Just what is a FAQ intended to do? It allows users to find answers to questions without them having to post their question to the net. For this newsgroup, there is a better way of doing this. Almost every article posted to the group is archived with both gopher and mail access to search facilities. This allows users to create their own list of questions that THEY are most interested in. So, this FAQ doesn't contain the normal list of answers that you might expect. It contains the information on how to access the archive of the newsgroup to get answers to the questions you want to ask. Since it doesn't contain "answers", is isn't likely to go out of date as quickly as other FAQs can. ------------------------------ Subject: Where is the archive, and how do I get to it? There are three ways of accessing the sci.image.processing archive. The least useful method is via anonymous ftp to ruby.oce.orst.edu. The sci.image.processing archive is in /pub/sci.image.processing. The raw articles are in the "articles" subdirectory, but unless you know the article number you won't be able to select articles by content. NOTICE: all accesses to the anonymous ftp server on ruby are logged, and the server requires you to enter a valid email address as a password. If you do not want a record of your usage, don't use it. Notice to ftp-by-mail users: some ftp-by-mail services do not wish to abide by the above usage restriction. Why this is a problem for them, I do not know. When I get tired of seeing the continued login failures, and the admin has refused to fix the problem, the ftp-by-mail host enters the "service denied" list, and all ftp connections are refused. The result is, you don't get the information you want, and you may never get any notification why not. The second method of access is via an almanac mail-server, also on ruby.oce.orst.edu. To initiate a search of the archive, send mail to almanac@ruby.oce.orst.edu containing a search command and the keyword or words you want to search for. For example: search sci.image.processing canny edge The search is an "or" based search; that is, articles that contain "canny" or "edge" will be located, but higher scores will be given to articles that contain both. It will not help you to say "canny and edge" -- the search will still be for the string "canny" OR the string "edge", and the "and" will be ignored by the search engine as too ubiquitous a word to have bothered indexing it in the first place. You will receive the results of your search by mail, as a list of article numbers and subjects, sorted by score. E.g.: ## Regarding your request: search sci.image.processing canny edge Article Author Subject ------- ---------- --------------------------------------------------- 10329 mapsajw@gd Canny Edge Detector 10356 defee@tukk Re: Canny Edge Detector 10340 eddins@ber Re: Canny Edge Detector 12440 michael@sh Re: Canny edge detector 12492 dganote@ir Re: Canny edge detector 10339 dubuf@sics Re: Canny Edge Detector 10476 mapsajw@gd Re: Canny Edge Detector [many more deleted] To retrieve articles, send a retrieve request to the almanac mail server. For example, the commands: retrieve sci.image.processing 10329 retrieve sci.image.processing 10356 will cause almanac to package up those two articles and mail them back to you. You may send more than one retrieve command per mail, and may mix retrieve and search commands. NOTICE: all requests to the almanac mail server are logged. If you don't want a record of your use to be made, don't use it. The Best Way: If you have a direct Internet connection, then the best way to access the archive is through gopher. (For a complete description of what gopher is, refer to the book "The Whole Internet" by Ed Krol, chapter 11. For a discussion about MacGopher or TurboGopher, see the Mac image processing FAQ written by Ed Huff, available in the same newsgroups this FAQ is.) There is a gopher server active on cil-gopher.oce.orst.edu, on port 71. Once you have the gopher client software on your system, you can point it at cil-gopher. How you would do that depends on what software you are using and the system it is on. Once you connect to the cil-gopher gopher server you will get a menu of items to select from. Select the "Information from the Coastal Imaging Lab" item. Under that will be a Sci.image.processing newsgroup archive entry. When you select that item, you will be in the archive. The first item in the archive is a WAIS index selection. When you select that, you will be prompted for keywords to search for. This is the same type of list that you would have provided to the almanac mail server -- an OR based list. You will be shown a list of matching articles. To retrieve an article, you simply select it from the list. There are several other items in the Sci.image.processing archive. The discussion held in news.groups concerning the formation of the group is available, as is the actual newgroup message and charter from the Call For Votes. There is a list of image processing specific mailing lists (extracted from the List of Mailing Lists, posted to news.lists every month or so), and, for the trivia buffs, the voter list. NOTICE: No, I am not going to tell you that the gopher connections are logged (even though they are). Please notice that the FTP site is ruby.oce.orst.edu and the gopher site is cil-gopher.oce.orst.edu. If you try to gopher to ruby, or ftp to skyking, you will be refused access. Attempting to make the same connection multiple times will not convince the computer that it should let you do what you want. Cil-gopher will happily refuse ftp connections all day long, as will ruby refuse gopher ones. Both will gladly refuse telnet connections. ------------------------------ Subject: How to get gopher. Gopher is available via anonymous ftp from boombox.micro.umn.edu, in the directory pub/gopher. Gopher clients for many different systems are available there. I do not have experience installing clients for anything but Unix systems so I cannot tell you what is involved for the PC or Mac clients. (The PC client requires a Clarkson packet driver to talk to the Ethernet; the documentation with the PC gopher client explains how to get that. Getting the Mac client is described in Ed Huff's Mac FAQ.) ------------------------------ Subject: How to search for followups to an article Once you have found an article that is of interest, you can use the Message-Id found in its header as a search string. This frequently produces more articles than desired, however, since each substring delimited by periods etc. is treated as a separate word. You might want to leave off the hostname part of the ID, and use just the unique left hand part. Unfortunately, WAIS is not a very good general purpose newsreader, so threading is not implemented. ------------------------------ Subject: How to identify the start of a thread. The WAIS search software uses the string Re: in its original meaning: "with regards to:", and not as "in reply to:". That means that every reported match is listed as "Re: the subject of this article". If the subject of the article was "Re: Canny Edge Detection", WAIS will report a match "Re: Re: Canny Edge Detection". The start of a thread will have only one Re: -- the one WAIS adds. This applies only to the gopher search results. The mail server software, as a locally generated product, was written specifically for news articles and strips the Re: supplied by WAIS before mailing the reply to you.