Thank you for your interest in the FreeLore Project. For now I am contacting everyone individually, in addition to sending out the mass mailing. This is to test communication channels. If you do not receive a duplicate of Bulletin No. 2 in a few days, let me know! This material is also available on alt.uu.future and will be archived at several FTP sites to be announced. One of these sites will be in Finland; we still need a U.S. Site. Please consider your site for archiving our newsletter and journal. The space demands should be minimal. Actual project materials will be highly distributed as part of the project design. (i.e. we hope the project takes off so exposively that keeping track of all materials becomes a nearly impossible task). The key to all this is the writers: if you are knowledgeable about something, write down what you know, copyleft it (see sample notice at end of bulletin), and make it freely distributable! John Goodwin jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov +1 708 840 8069 ------------- FreeLore Bulletin No. 2 Articles in this Issue: **1 FreeLore Project Startup **2 FreeLore Project Needs Writers, Software Developers, Markup Volunteers, Library Scientists, and Administrators **3 FreeLore Project Needs Software Developers and Consultants **4 FreeLore Project Proposed Software Design Goals (Please Comment) **5 FreeLore Project Software Development Tasks (preliminary) ================= **1 FreeLore Project Startup The FreeLore Project exists to --promote the production of freely distributed educational and other useful materials (``FreeLore'') in the electronic and electronically-derived print media; --capture public domain data in a useful electronic form; --produce freely distributed software to view and use FreeLore; --encourage free access to information generally. We hope to accomplish these goals in the context of freely distributed software (basically the GNU project and its various ports, plus what we write). We are a parallel project and not directly related to the Free Software Foundation, although we expect to work closely with them. Our initial effort will lie in four areas: (1) We will solicit contributions of educational materials and provide volunteers to mark the texts up in any of a number of ``preliminary markup languages'' (undoubtably, various versions of TeX will be among those supported). (2) We will provide software support to translate from the preliminary markup languages to an as yet undefined final markup language. This markup language will probably be SGML and will probably support some form of hypertext (Hytime). It will either directly support the World Wide Web or be translatable to HTML. Software support will also provide freely distributed browsers, including at least one that works on character-oriented terminals and one for X windows. Software support should eventually include some sort of system for going directly from a text editor to the target markup. (3) We will solicit publishing and subscribing sites. The subscribing sites will be the most numerous and will have some minimum configuration like an internet hookup, a character-oriented terminal, and a postscript laser printer. Publisher sites will be any anonymous FTP server. We will prepare ``starter kits'' so that the writers, markers, publishing sites, subscribing sites, volunteer software developers, etc., can work in a decentralized fashion. (4) In addition, we will try to catalogue and track materials that are created under our ``self-franchising'' operation, if we are told of them. `` Cataloguing'' is envisioned as placing pointers to the documents in a single page :-) of the World Wide Web and making a copy version available via anonymous FTP. This is probably only a short term solution: in the long run we will need an institutional sponsor with significant resources for cataloguing. ====================================================================== **2 FreeLore Project Needs Writers, Software Developers, Markup Volunteers, Library Scientists, and Administrators The FreeLore project will only be a success if we have a large number of volunteers. We do not have to wait for software developement to start writing or collecting texts. The texts will not be stored at a single site, but at a very large number of distributed sites. Please consider yourself for one of the volunteer postions listed below: -------- VOLUNTEER WRITERS OR CONTRIBUTERS OF TEXT FOR MARKUP Basically, all you have to do to be a contributer is add a GNU-like copyright to a document you write or have written, and make it available on an FTP server. How-to details will be included in (the next?) bulletin. For now, if you don't have a site that supports anonymous FTP, just send email to jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov, and I will try to find a home for your manuscript. Later on, we hope to provide a list of ``publishers'' and the works they specialize in. No subjects are taken and we are certainly not limiting ourselves to technical subjects like computer science, math, or physics. Texts that mix several languages may have to wait until we work out the details of embedding non-English languages in English text (a high priority). Please do not contribute materials without the consent of the author (unless the author has been dead at least 75 years and you are sure you are not violating someone's copyright). ------------- VOLUNTEERS TO DO MARKUP (almost certain to include some dialects of TeX, LaTeX, and Texinfo) We will decide as early as possible about supported preliminary markup languages. For now, keep reading the bulletin and scrounge your sites for potential authors! ------------ SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS Software tasks are so numerous and varied that a separate article has been devoted to them. See Below. ------------ PROJECT ADMINISTRATORS If you are willing to handle correspondence, maintain membership lists and lists of consultants, answer questions about the project, edit newsletters and journals, prepare kits for prosepctive project members, solicit writers and publication sites, and similar onerous tasks, without any (monetary) compensation, I would very much like to speak to you. jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov +1 708 840 8069 You should be well connected to the internet and of a cheerful disposition. ---------------- SPONSORING INSTITUTIONS NEEDED If your institution is able to make educational materials available via anonymous FTP, and you are willing to participate in the project as a ``publishing'' site, please contact jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov with details of the service you can provide, a contact person, and any restrictions on the sorts of materials you will store. ----------------- **3 SOFTWARE CONSULTANTS AND DEVELOPERS NEEDED We need both developers of software and consultants. If you are willing to be added to the consultant list, contact John Goodwin (jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov). Your name will not be released in a public list, unless you give us explicit permission to do this, but our central administration may contact you or put software developers in contact with you as needed. I do not put you on the consultant's list simply because you contact me and tell me that you have expertise in a certain field. In many cases, there are other projects that will have a large effect on what we do. If you are willing to act as liason (mostly keep abreast of what they are doing and tell us about it), write John Goodwin jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov Consultants are needed in the following areas: ----------------- SGML, HYTIME, HYPERTEXT SIGHYPER AND DAVENPORT LIASONS We need someone experienced with SGML and/or Hytime standards, who can advise us on recent developments, existing freely distributed software, other projects etc. We also need persons to act as liasons to SIGHyper and the Davenport project. ------------------ GUTENBERG PROJECT We need someone who can act as liason to the Gutenberg Project. ------------------ HTML CONSULTANT WORLD WIDE WEB LIASON We need someone to act as liason to the World Wide Web project. Also, we need someone who is familiar or willing to become familiar with the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) used by the WWW project. To find out more about the World Wide Web, telnet info.cern.ch and login as www [no password]. --------------- INTERNET GURU NEEDED We need someone who knows about networking, is familiar with RFCs and the issues involved in transmitting text without garbbling it. --------------- MAILING LIST CONSULTANT We need someone with wide experience getting email through to remote parts of the globe and decrypting wierd messages about mailing failures. -------------- POSTSCRIPT GURU We need someone familiar with the postscript language, EPS, laser printers, etc. -------------- X WINDOWS/MOTIF/UNIX/C WIZARDS Most potential software developers mentioned expertise in these or that they were learning them as rapidly as possible. However, we would still like to keep a list of persons who can advise us and keep up with these fields. Please be as specific as possible about your areas and levels of expertise. --------------- TeX WIZARD TUG LIASON Since we expect to accept TeX as a preliminary markup language in some fashion, and since TeX to SGML conversion, hypertext and so on is a frequent topic in TUGBoat, we need someone to track and advise us on these subjects. --------------- GNU SOFTWARE EXPERT FSF LIASON We would like to be fully operable within the GNU environment and to maintain close ties with the Free Software Foundation. If you are experienced using GNU software and willing help advise about getting it running and getting our stuff to work with it, please ask to be added to our consultant's list. We also need a liason with the FSF, preferably someone who has written related software for the GNU project and is familiar with standards, proceedures, testing, etc. --------------- LIBRARY SCIENTIST NEEDED Part of our marked up document will be a ``catalogue card'' that permits us to maintain lists of documents, what they are about, and where to find them. We need someone familiar with and also recent developments in the MARC format as it pertains to documents available by anonymous FTP. Someone with knowledge of international cataloguing trends and standards could help us a lot. Contact: John Goodwin jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov +1 708 840 8069 Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory MS-341 P.O. Box 500 Batavia, IL 60174 --------------- COPYRIGHT LAW EXPERT NEEDED If you have had enough professional experience with copyright law (e.g. you are a lawyer) and are willing to advise us on a pro bono basis about wording of copyrights, copyright infringements, etc. in the areas of documents and/or software, please contact: John Goodwin jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov ====================================================================== **3 FreeLore Project Needs Software Developers The best way to begin being a FreeLore Project Software Developer is to prepare yourself to become a consultant in one of the above areas using the contact information given there or in the discussion of possible projects (See **5), and then to read and comment on the design goals below (See **4). If you indicate to me that you want to be a developer, I will send you a list of other developers. You should contact each other and discuss the design goals, etc. For now, please keep me in the loop. I am not a Software Engineer and expect that this part of the project will eventually be supervised by someone the ``Software Development Group'' chooses. ====================================================================== **4 FreeLore Project Proposed Software Design Goals (Please Comment) >>>DRAFT<<< Version 0.1 22 December 1992 The FreeLore Software Suite allows the preparation, viewing, and printing of marked up text. GENERAL o the design goals are met with freely distributed (preferrably copylefted) software. o all software expressly created for the project will be written in portable ANSI-standard C. (at least the core software; g++ should be an option for fancy stuff?) o all software will run minimally in the GNU environment on a UNIX (or linux...) machine. o the system will work on a character-oriented terminal with significant enhancements for an X terminal. ALLOWED INPUT TEXT o Acceptable plaintext input uses any of several character sets including at least US ASCII and ISO Latin-1. Preferably it will also include the "two-character" sets of RFC 1049 (essentially Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic alphabets). o The plaintext input is either email robust or a converter is provided to make it email robust. o The plaintext input can include multiple mnemonic character sets to represent other languages in an almost human-readable form, as defined in RFC 1049. This is important for many educational texts, which contain quotations in other alphabets or are textbooks with examples in other languages. PRELIMINARY AND FINAL MARKUP o Accepts preliminary markup or formatting in a number of forms including several forms of TeX or LaTex, (nroff markup?), Texinfo, and perhaps also common proprietary formats (WordPerfect, Microsoft RTF?--or do we care?). o Uses some form of SGML for the target representation (various DTDs or one DTD?). This stage is called ``final markup.'' o (email to SGML direct) A method is provided to encapsulate any valid plaintext or any valid preliminary markup document in a final valid SGML document. This is a minimal automated form of markup. This minimal markup should correctly treat embedded character sets (including both the ``two-character'' sets and the mnemonic character sets representing non-English languages) and embedded equations, (also encoded binary figures?). BROWSING AND PRINTING o The SGML form supports a hypertext browser, e.g. complies with Hytime. o At least two browsers are initially provided: one for character oriented terminals; and an X11 browser. o The SGML form supports connection to the World Wide Web, either directly, by conversion, or through a server. o The SGML form can be printed as typeset quality text on a postscript laser printer by some path (including possibly back-conversion to TeX, initially). GRAPHICS o (Graphics in separate document or embedded in SGML?) o If graphics are present in the SGML document, an apologetic note is added by the character-mode browser. DOWNGRADING THE MARKED UP FORM o The SGML form can have the markup ``stripped'' and returned to plaintext in a way that permits viewing of contents without markup ``clutter''. [Clutter does not include things like equations, but does include things like kerning, font choice, etc. GNU Texinfo-->Info is a good example of how to downgrade a marked up file, except that it requires writing equations twice if you want it to appear in both printed output and Info.] o The SGML can be returned to any of the preliminary markup or format forms. This operation is not the inverse of the preliminary to final markup form, but rather provides a standard and useful way to ``downgrade'' the hypertext. Specific markup is lost in the, say, TeX to SGML, translation, then a standard specific markup is added in the SGML to TeX translation. The result is a standardized document, so the composition of the two translations is useful, i.e. not the identity transformation and not garbage. ====================================================================== **5 FreeLore Project Software Development Tasks (preliminary) This list is very preliminary, since the design goals are not yet set; but it gives an idea of the sorts of things we will probably be doing. CARTOON OF WHAT THE FINAL SYSTEM MIGHT LOOK LIKE Input Plaintext (May be provided by anyone) | | | v Initial Markup ---> .DVI file --> postscript (TeX/Texinfo document, etc.) | ^ | | | | (``downgrading'') v | SGML/Hytime document ---> postscript | | | | | | | | | | | X11 Hypertext Browser/Previewer | | World Wide Web Hypertext Browser | Character Mode Hypertext Browser Plaintext downgrade (content dump) Notice that most of this functionality is provided already if you use Texinfo as the initial markup language, have a Texinfo to HTML converter, and use HTML in place of SGML+Hytime. We really need convergence between GNU (Texinfo), WWW, and the Davenport (SGML/Hytime) project, since all of them are trying to provide the same thing, more or less. USEFUL THINGS TO DO (FREELORE PROJECT PROTO-TASK LIST) o Find out about the Davenport Project and see if there is any PD or copylefted code that implements the Hytime standard. o Set up a WWW server at your site and get the X11/Motif or X11 browser running. To get information telnet info.cern.ch and login as WWW [no password]. o Read RFC 1049; compare with RFCs 1341 and 1345. Write a C program that will search for character mnemonics embedded in plaintext and convert them to a markup language (TeX or better SGML). o (related) write an X11 program to display plaintext with embedded non-English character sets. It should do something reasonable if the font is not available (like leave mnemonics alone, but convert two-character codes to mnemonics). o Get Guido Van Rossum's program to convert Texinfo to HTML and rewrite it in gcc or g++. Van Rossum's program is written in an object-oriented interpreter called Python, which you can get at the same ftp site: ftp.cwi.nl. o Write a C program to convert Texinfo to SGML/Hytime so it will run on your system. (After we agree on the standard :-) o Get ARC-SGML and information on Hytime from ftp.ifi.uio.no and write a character-oriented or X11 hypertext browser. o Write an HTML server for Texinfo or some other dialect of TeX, i.e. a program which can scan documents and answer a query, not just convert them. o set up a linux system (when SLIP runs on Linux) and figure out what the minimum system to run TeX, GNU EMACS with info, a SLIP connection to the World Wide Web and still drive a postscript laser printer is. Happy Hunting, John Goodwin jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov ============ Copyright (c) 1992 John E. Goodwin Permission is hereby granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the FreeLore Bulletin provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.