[Coco] Anybody willing to put Delphi Msgs on the Web?

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

Based on my Delphi work years ago, I expect that inputting to Paradox would
not be difficult. A simple text read routine would be written to put the
bodies in memo or some other large text container. AWK preprocessor scripts
to do most of the work if needed. I have done this before, but not with
Paradox which makes it easier. I submit that a KWIC product would be most
useful and I would ask for help from the Paradox folk to be able to build it
efficiently.

The problems lie elsewhere.

The first problem is determining that there are sufficient CoCoer's
interested in using the product to warrant the large amount of work and disk
storage space needed. I remain unconvinced.

If persons wish to have this project done then a truthful description of
what they have searched for in the past and how they did it needs to be
posted.

The second is coming up with a product format that sufficient numbers of
CoCoer's can use. Due to the volume of data involved most searches on the
raw data would take way too long. They would only be possible if Paradox
were used, or some other very powerful data base manager which few CoCoer's
have available.

On a fast machine!

I can make the Paradox 10 run time available for free but many people would
not like to install it just for one purpose. Full Paradox retail cost is
high, but some copies can be had at a very low cost. That is where I got
mine when I moved up from PDOX 7 to 10.

Conversion to other DB forms would not be hard, but again searches on the
raw data would not be useful.

You have to work with Paradox for some time and then switch to something
else to understand why it was named Paradox.

The real problem is the Noise to Signal ratio which is very high.

Each message must be scanned by a human and sorted into CoCo, OT and Ignore
lists. This must be done by Humans, I see no way around it.

If there really are people interested in the product, then they need to
volunteer to sort 1-3 months, no one person doing more than 3 months.

When two years have been sorted, then a vote would be taken to determine if
the project should go forward.

Filtering SPAM would not be a problem as there is a header field declaring
this message is SPAM for the B.L.CoCo list during the flood.

The OT and Ignore products would be available for those interested. I would
expect that no WEB Master would want to host the Ignore product because
of its size.

-- 
Stephen H. Fischer

Lothan wrote:
> If you are willing to share the files you have, I may be able to parse the
> data into an indexed database, XML, or some other searchable/importable
> format.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com]
>> On Behalf Of Stephen H. Fischer
>> Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 1:01 AM
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Anybody willing to put Delphi Msgs on the Web?
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> This has been a stalled project for me for many years now.
>>
>> I doubt  the interest is much higher than the zero point.
>>
>> Some of the files with interesting years totally missing are one
>> drawback, the presentation method another.

>> Too many of the CoCo'ers do not have the ability to access whatever
>> format I  thought about.

>> Different formats are no problem as AWK will allow adjusting for
>> differences, AWK reformatted files would be the data base input.
>>
>> --
>> Stephen H. Fischer
>>
>> Dean Leiber wrote:
>>> While I've been working on the CoCo/OS-9 Archive CD I've gotten a hold
>>> of a bunch of Delphi and Compuserve CoCo SIG Messages. They are spread
>>> across various files from different sources and while they are archived
>>> they aren't particularly useful the way they are. Would someone be
>>> willing to organize them, etc. ? I was hoping someone could do some kind
>>> of web based reader (or something of that nature) so people could have
>>> access to them via the internet. Anyone interested in doing this in
>>> their copius spare time ;-) ?
>>>
>>> Dean