Title:		Notesfiles

Authors:	Ray Essick

		Department of Computer Science
		222 Digital Computer Laboratory
		University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
		1304 West Springfield Ave.
		Urbana, IL 61801

		uiucdcs!essick	       (UUCP)
		essick.uiuc@rand-relay (ARPA)


		Rob Kolstad

		Parsec Scientific Computer Corporation
		Richardson, TX

		parsec!kolstad	        (UUCP)

Description:

	Notesfiles support computer managed discussion forums.
Discussions can have many different purposes and scopes: the notesfile
system has been designed to be flexible enough to handle differing
requirements.

	Each notesfile discusses a single topic.  The depth of
discussion within a notesfile is ideally held constant.  While some
users may require a general discussion of personal workstations, a
different group may desire detailed discussions about the I/O bus
structure of the WICAT 68000 (a particular workstation).  These
discussions might well be separated into two different notesfiles.

	Each notesfile contains a list of logically independent notes
(called base notes).  A note is a block of text with a comment or
question intended to be seen by members of the notesfile community.
The note display shows the text, its creation time, its title, the
notesfile's title, the author's name (some notesfiles allow anonymous
notes), the number of ``responses'', and optionally a ``director
message''.  Each base note can have a number of ``responses'': replies,
retorts, further comments, criticism, or related questions concerning
the base note.  Thus, a notesfile contains an ordered list of ordered
lists.  This arrangement has historically been more convenient than
other proposals (e.g., trees were studied on the PLATO (trademark of
CDC) system).

	The concept of a notesfile was originally implemented at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, on the PLATO system
(trademark of Control Data Corporation).  The UNIX (trademark of
Western Electric) notesfile system includes these ideas with
adaptations and enhancements made possible by the UNIX environment.

	The UNIX notesfile system provides users with the abilities to
read notes and responses, write notes and responses, forward note text
to other users (via mail) or other notesfiles, save note text in their
own files, and sequence through a set of notesfiles seeing just new
text.  Each notesfile has a set of ``directors'' who manage the
notesfile:  they delete old notes, compress the file when needed, grant
and restrict access to the notesfile, and set different notesfile
parameters (e.g., title, ``director message'', policy note, whether
notes' authors can be anonymous).  Some notesfiles contain
correspondence from other computers.  Like the UNIX ``USENET'', notes
and responses are exchanged (often over phone lines) with remote
machines.  The notesfile system provides automatic exchange and
updating of notes in an arbitrarily connected network.

Installation:

To install notesfiles, type:

	make base boot

base: will create the base directories
boot: will create the other directories and compile and install the programs
