[4117]  daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (epeisach@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) Consulting_FYI 09/03/91 10:31 (76 lines)
Subject: Wais locker available for perusal/playing/testingc
From: epeisach@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 91 10:30:50 -0400
To: developers@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, cfyi@ATHENA.MIT.EDU


The Wais locker is available for testing. WAIS refers to "Wide Area
Information Servers" The system provides a means to explore text-based
information systems on the internet. Wais attempts to use an early version of the Z3950 standard. 

Instead of my trying to tell you what is out there, let me tell you how
to do it yourselves:

athena% add wais
athena% xwais

This will create in your homedir the directories:
wais-sources and wais-questions.

You probably want to create a directory wais-documents yourself.

(The above direcories can be overridden by environment variables/x resources)

Binaries exist for the vax, rt, decmips, rsaix, sun4.

If you don't add wais first, then the above will not work on the vax and
rt. (Something I'll fix eventually)

Press the new question button to start a new question.

In the X WAIS Question window, using the "Add Source" button/menu -
select the wais-docs.src

In the "tell me about" window use the keyword "wais <return>" 

This will provide you with the interesting doc's about the system. 

Help buttons exist - so use them.

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For fun, I suggest the following:

Add the source "directory-of-servers.doc" and look up the following
"world weather library poetry"

You will get a response of various servers which you can add to your
source list. 

Some of the more interesting ones:

weather.src: weather-info (from synoptic.mit.edu) pluss weather maps
	from the day. (gif format)

world-factbook.src: The 1990 World Factbook by the CIA - a good
	desciption of every country

poetry.src - may poems including Shakepeare, Yeats and Swayer

online-libraries.src - Explains how to access many libraries in the
country.

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Extra notes:

If you want to view a GIF file (usually something named .GIF) you must
have xlodimage in your path. I suggest using "add graphics" before
starting xwais.

There is an emacs extension which seems to work in
/mit/wais/{vax,rt,decmips,sun4,rsaix}bin/wais.el

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Feel free to send me any questions.

	Ezra
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