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Annotation of 43BSD/contrib/notes/doc/1, revision 1.1.1.1

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                      3: .ch "Introduction"
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                      5: 
                      6:        Notesfiles support computer managed discussion
                      7: forums.  Discussions can have many different purposes and scopes: the
                      8: notesfile system has been designed to be flexible enough to handle differing
                      9: requirements.
                     10: 
                     11:        Each notesfile discusses a single
                     12: topic.
                     13: The depth of discussion within a notesfile is ideally held constant.
                     14: While some users may require a general discussion of personal workstations,
                     15: a different group may desire detailed discussions about the I/O bus
                     16: structure of the WICAT 68000 (a particular workstation).  These discussions
                     17: might well be separated into two different notesfiles.
                     18: 
                     19:        Each notesfile contains a list of logically
                     20: independent notes (called base notes).
                     21: A note is a block of text with a comment or question intended to be seen by members
                     22: of the notesfile community.  The note display shows the text,
                     23: its creation time, its title, the notesfile's title,
                     24: the author's name (some notesfiles allow anonymous notes), the number of ``responses'',
                     25: and optionally a ``director message''.
                     26: Each base note can have a number of ``responses'': replies, retorts, further
                     27: comments, criticism, or related questions concerning the base note.
                     28: Thus, a notesfile contains an ordered list of ordered lists.  This arrangement
                     29: has historically been more convenient than other proposals (e.g., trees
                     30: were studied on the PLATO (trademark of CDC) system).
                     31: 
                     32:        The concept of a notesfile was originally implemented at
                     33: the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
                     34: on the PLATO system (trademark of Control
                     35: Data Corporation). 
                     36: The UNIX (trademark of Western Electric) 
                     37: notesfile system
                     38: includes these ideas with
                     39: adaptations
                     40: and enhancements
                     41: made possible by the UNIX environment.
                     42: 
                     43:        The UNIX notesfile system was
                     44: designed and
                     45: implemented by Ray Essick at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
                     46: It provides users with the abilities to
                     47: read notes and responses, write notes and responses, forward note text to
                     48: other users (via mail) or other notesfiles, save note text in their own files,
                     49: and sequence through a set of notesfiles seeing just new text.
                     50: Each notesfile has a set of ``directors'' who manage the notesfile:
                     51: they delete old notes, compress the file when needed, grant and restrict
                     52: access to the notesfile, and set different notesfile parameters (e.g.,
                     53: title, ``director message'', policy note, whether notes' authors can be
                     54: anonymous).
                     55: Some notesfiles contain correspondence from other computers.
                     56: Like the UNIX ``USENET'', notes and responses are exchanged (often over phone lines)
                     57: with remote machines.
                     58: The notesfile system provides automatic exchange and updating of notes in an
                     59: arbitrarily connected network.
                     60: 
                     61:        This document details the use of notesfiles from invocation through
                     62: intersystem notes exchanges.  The last chapter summarizes the entire set of
                     63: commands for easy reference.
                     64: An appendix contains detailed checklists for the
                     65: installation of a notesfile system.

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