[Scrollkeeper-devel] ScrollKeeper, Meta, DOSSIER

[Rich M. <rd...@cf...>]

Thanks for the nice write-up on SK.  I have been watching it evolve
for a while now, hoping that it can serve as a component in the Meta
Project (http://www.cfcl.com/Meta), my exploration into integrating
system metadata and documentation.

As you note, a typical *nix system contains many thousands of files.
At some level, the system "knows" what each of the files is for, how
it is formatted, etc.  After all, if it didn't, it couldn't use them.

Unfortunately, this knowledge is largely unavailable to the user.  If
I want to know the purposes and format of /etc/frammitz, I may have a
bit of work ahead of me.  Sometimes there will be a man page; other
times there will only be a FILES reference in a man page, if that.

As a way of exploring this issue, I have prototyped a "browser" for
files and man pages.  Using mechanically-derived data, hand-edited
annotation files, and a small set of "rules", I generate a graph of
the files in an operating system distribution.  Then, when someone
asks for information on a given file or manual page, a CGI script
can explore the local neighborhood of the file in the graph, printing
out a list of (putatively :-) relevant items.

I have been using *nix systems for ~20 years, so I am quite familiar
with the system file tree.  Nonetheless, I find that the browser
frequently comes up with useful relationships I hadn't suspected.  A
newer user would, of course, find even more "new" information.

As a way of using this information (and funding further efforts), I
have decided to start publishing documentation collections.  See the
DOSSIER (http://www.ptf.com/dossier) web page for more information.
While some of the volumes are merely printed versions of substantial
sets of Open Source documentation (e.g., the PostgreSQL manuals), I
have also pulled together some topical sets of papers and man pages:

   Email: Mail and Sendmail
   File Systems: FreeBSD Manual Pages
   Kernel: FreeBSD Manual Pages
   Text: Manual Pages

If even a tiny fraction of the user community decides that these are
useful, I will be able to continue creating and publishing new sets.
This, in turn, should allow me to move on to the next generation of
the browser, using ScrollKeeper and other appropriate technologies.

-r
-- 
email: rd...@cf...; phone: +1 650-873-7841
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm - home page, resume, etc.
http://www.cfcl.com/Meta/md_fb.html - The FreeBSD Browser
http://www.ptf.com/tdc - Prime Time Freeware's Darwin Collection