DOCUMENT Introduction to the "techreports" Locker AUTHOR Reid M. Pinchback Faculty Liaison, Academic Computing Services, MIT LAST UPDATED 92/03/02 (RMP) OVERVIEW The techreports locker contains online versions of technical reports from academic institutions around the world. Typically, these reports are of a mathematical, computational, or engineering nature. The format in which the reports are stored depends on the practice of the site from where they originated, but typically they are in compressed postscript. Such files will have ".ps.Z" at the end of the file name. Except for such extensions, the name of the report file is usually based on the report indexing scheme of its origin. To use compressed postscript files, you need to uncompress them with Unix commands like "uncompress" or "zcat". You can then view them on-line with the Gnu "gs" (ghostscript) utility, or print them on one of the Athena printers. For instance, to directly print the report 91-30.ps.Z, you would do the following: athena% cd /mit/techreports/ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de athena% zcat 91-30.ps.Z | lpr If you wanted to first view the report on-line, you could do the following: athena% cd /mit/techreports/ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de athena% uncompress -c 91-30.ps.Z > /tmp/91-30.ps athena% add gnu athena% gs /tmp/91-30.ps If you have not used ghostscript before, there is online documentation in the gnu locker, in the directory /mit/gnu/doc/misc/gs. If you have not used uncompress or zcat before, there are online man pages for those utilities. ORGANIZATION There are a number of subdirectories in the techreports locker that are named after various FTP sites. These subdirectories contain technical reports retrieved from that site. Additionally, a number of other informative files will exist in each subdirectory. These files are: README This contains status information about where the reports are from and when the locker was last updated with new material from that site. Here is a typical README file: Site name: Technical University of Aachen Site city: Aachen Site country: Germany Site IP name: ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de Site IP numbers: 134.130.52.1, 137.226.112.31 Report locations: pub/reports/ Last FTP update: 92/02/28 CONTENTS This is a brief listing of the reports. At this time there is no standard format, the format varies with how the FTP site records such information. ABSTRACTS This is a more detailed description of the reports. This file will only exist if the FTP site records such information, and its format will vary accordingly. The majority of reports in this locker are in English. Any reports that are not in English will be placed in subdirectories named according to the language of the report. For example, inside the directory for reports from ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de, there is a subdirectory named "german" which contains the report 90-14. If you find foreign-language reports to be useful, you should inform the maintainers of the locker so that reports in those languages can be retrieved in the future. MAINTENANCE At this time, the locker is maintained by the Faculty Liaisons. If you have requests for other technical reports, you can contact us by email at f_l@athena.mit.edu, or by telephone at x3-0115.