From: Vincent.Cate@FURMINT.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 94 22:01:34 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: WWW Acronyms (was Re: Cypherpunks' mail database does exist)
Message-ID: <771739927/vac@FURMINT.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU>
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Gary Jeffers:
>   Vincent, you  state that a fully archived, indexed cypherpunks
>mailing list exists as:
>http://pmip.maricopa.edu/crypt/cypherpunks/cypherpunks.src
>Ok, so I ftp'ed to pmip.maricopa.edu & tried to get to cypherpunks.src,
>but even the subdirectories weren't there. 

The "http" is for "Hyper-Text Transport Protocol".  This is not FTP,
though it is a protocol similar in function to FTP.  It is used by
"WWW" (World Wide Web) of which Mosaic is the most popular
implementation.  If you have Mosaic, you can just give the above path.
If you do not have mosaic, you should spend some time trying to get it.
Mosaic makes it really easy to quickly move through lots of information
on the net.  Mosaic is a point and click hypertext interface.  You
can FTP to ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu and go into Mosaic.

You also have a typo, it is "Cypherpunks.src" with a capital C.

WWW has a simple language for writting your own hypertext documents -
"HTML" (Hyper Text Markup Language).  You can think of this as sort of
like Troff, LaTeX or Postscript, but for hypertext documents.  One page
of HTML can make dozens of normal files easy to access. For example, my
README.html security page points to many normal files:

     ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/README.html

It turns out that the mail database is really in "WAIS" (Wide Area
Information Server).  You can use WAIS directly, though I think it is
easier to use through mosaic.  To use WAIS you would do:

 ws -h pmip.maricopa.edu -d cpindex/Cypherpunks <keyword>

The "ws" may be "waissearch" on your system.  You can get lots of info
on WAIS from ftp://wais.think.com/comp.infosystems.wais-FAQ

As someone pointed out, this "http" method does not yet work with
"lynx" (a text only implementation of WWW) on the cypherpunks mail
database.  It seems it will take a new version of lynx or WAIS for this
to work.  But the Unix "xmosaic" works fine. :-)

This form of global filename starting with something like "ftp://",
"http://", "gopher://" etc is also part of the WWW architecture.
These names are called "URLs" for Universal Resource Locator.

Well, that is probably enough acronyms for today.  :-)

   -- Vince

PS  I only read cypherpunks once a day, some time after midnight when my
    collection for the day is done.