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Annotation of 43BSDReno/share/doc/usd/11.notes/1, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: .\"    @(#)1   6.1 (Berkeley) 5/26/86
                      2: .\"
                      3: .sp |.5i
                      4: .ls 1
                      5: .ch "Introduction"
                      6: .wh 0 hh
                      7: 
                      8:        Notesfiles support computer managed discussion
                      9: forums.  Discussions can have many different purposes and scopes: the
                     10: notesfile system has been designed to be flexible enough to handle differing
                     11: requirements.
                     12: 
                     13:        Each notesfile discusses a single
                     14: topic.
                     15: The depth of discussion within a notesfile is ideally held constant.
                     16: While some users may require a general discussion of personal workstations,
                     17: a different group may desire detailed discussions about the I/O bus
                     18: structure of the WICAT 68000 (a particular workstation).  These discussions
                     19: might well be separated into two different notesfiles.
                     20: 
                     21:        Each notesfile contains a list of logically
                     22: independent notes (called base notes).
                     23: A note is a block of text with a comment or question intended to be seen by members
                     24: of the notesfile community.  The note display shows the text,
                     25: its creation time, its title, the notesfile's title,
                     26: the author's name (some notesfiles allow anonymous notes), the number of ``responses'',
                     27: and optionally a ``director message''.
                     28: Each base note can have a number of ``responses'': replies, retorts, further
                     29: comments, criticism, or related questions concerning the base note.
                     30: Thus, a notesfile contains an ordered list of ordered lists.  This arrangement
                     31: has historically been more convenient than other proposals (e.g., trees
                     32: were studied on the PLATO (trademark of Control Data Corporation) system).
                     33: 
                     34:        The concept of a notesfile was originally implemented at
                     35: the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
                     36: on the PLATO system.
                     37: The UNIX (trademark of Bell Laboratoris) 
                     38: notesfile system
                     39: includes these ideas with
                     40: adaptations
                     41: and enhancements
                     42: made possible by the UNIX environment.
                     43: 
                     44:        The UNIX notesfile system was
                     45: designed and
                     46: implemented by Ray Essick at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
                     47: It provides users with the abilities to
                     48: read notes and responses, write notes and responses, forward note text to
                     49: other users (via mail) or other notesfiles, save note text in their own files,
                     50: and sequence through a set of notesfiles seeing just new text.
                     51: Each notesfile has a set of ``directors'' who manage the notesfile:
                     52: they delete old notes, compress the file when needed, grant and restrict
                     53: access to the notesfile, and set different notesfile parameters (e.g.,
                     54: title, ``director message'', policy note, whether notes' authors can be
                     55: anonymous).
                     56: Some notesfiles contain correspondence from other computers.
                     57: Like the UNIX ``USENET'', notes and responses are exchanged (often over phone lines)
                     58: with remote machines.
                     59: The notesfile system provides automatic exchange and updating of notes in an
                     60: arbitrarily connected network.
                     61: 
                     62:        This document details the use of notesfiles from invocation through
                     63: intersystem notes exchanges.  The last chapter summarizes the entire set of
                     64: commands for easy reference.
                     65: An appendix contains detailed checklists for the
                     66: installation of a notesfile system.

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