[Leica] Archives not user-friendly

[pieter@world.std.com (Pieter Bras)]

Alan Ball wrote:

>PS The LUG list archives are absolutely NOT user friendly. It is very
>difficult to trace an old message. I personally have no trace of
>previous discussions on the subject....

Mary McGough wrote:

>Personally I find the archives very inadequate to work with, unless you
>are a computer expert with a very sophisticated SORTING program!!!!!
>The LUGnuts that snidely remark to newbies "check the archives" have
>probably never extensively done so themselves.
>
>If someone can enlighten me with a simple way to recover information
>without knowing the approximate date - I would be very appreciative.

Right now, there is no "simple way".  The only way to "check the
archives" is to download the entire collection of old digests and search
them on your own computer.  That's more than 50MB of digests!  (About
20MB in compressed format.)  Downloading all of that is guaranteed to
overflow anyone's email in-box.

I did actually download all of the digests, and organized them in
zip-files by month.  Then I wrote a fairly simple program to do multiple
keyword searches, on a per-article basis.  Unfortunatley, the program
is written in REXX (an IBM mainframe scripting language) and will
currently run only under IBM's OS/2 operating system (please -- no
flames!); what's more, I am not motivated to port it to any other
environment.

If there are any other LUG subscribers who perchance are using OS/2,
I am willing to make the software available on a "freeware" basis.

I could also make the monthly zip-file archives available via FTP.
(Personally, I think at least this much the LUG list-server could and
ought to do.)

Interested parties can contact me via private e-mail, but don't expect
an answer before the week-end.

- --
Pieter Bras      pieter@world.std.com