Subject: PWG> Anyone interested in examining Alta-Vista?

From: JK Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:50:28 -0400 (EDT)

Greetings,

Tom Hastings has been working hard to locate a tool that can potentially
simplify reading and posting messages to various discussion lists.

Is anyone out there in PWG-land interested in helping Tom review a
potentially useful tool towards this end?  Unfortunately, my current
schedule precludes any subtantial effort on my part at this time.

Anyone interested?

	...jay

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>From [email-masked] Wed Apr 23 13:29 EDT 1997
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 10:24:25 PDT
To: Jay Martin <[email-masked]>
From: Tom Hastings <[email-masked]>
Subject: Trying out Alta-Vista - I did it and it looks just like NOTES!
Cc: [email-masked]

I just talked with Peter Hurley and their newer version of
AltaVista Forum won't be out until June, though there is a beta now.

However, the existing version has been out for a year or more
(and is nice and stable).

Their group has been using it as a Technical Support vehicle for
AltaVista Forum itself.  He suggested that I register and take a look
at a real live forum.  I did.  Its a web interface to NOTES.

I don't know what extra features it has over what we had in NOTES.

Anyway, here is how to get into it.

You can either register yourself as I did, or more simply login as me
(hastings with password ietf-pwg) to take a quick look.  If you want
to ask a question, though it might be better to register yourself
(which is easy and costs nothing, as I did).

URL

http://www.altavista.software.digital.com

Scroll down to the bottom and click on Support

Then click on Technical Support which gets you to:

http://support.altavista.software.digital.com/ISBUTECHSUP/intro.htm

Either register or login.

And click on AltaVista Forum (first in list)

and you're in.

Scroll down and you see the familiar NOTES topics starting with
topic 1222 and going in reverse order.

Try it and see what you think?

Could we use it for the PWG?

I've asked Peter Hurley about whether there is a mail interface to
post topics and replies or not, but haven't heard back.  If there isn't,
we may not be able to use AltaVista for IETF WGs according to 
the area directors.  I think there is a way for a user to get all topics 
and replies as e-mail, as in NOTES.

Peter said he'd help us add AltaVista to your web server for
the 30-day free trial, if AltaVista looks promising.

Tom

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 17:30:45 -0400

> simplify reading and posting messages to various discussion lists.

I guess I don't understand why this is needed.  

Would somebody please explain to me (perhaps in private mail) what's
to be gained by using such a tool?  It doesn't appear to me to offer
much functionality over email, and email is surely a lot more tolerant
of network outages/delays.  But it's possible that your email readers
are a lot less capable than the ones I'm accustomed to.

Keith