[13793] in Athena Bugs

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Re: problems with infoagents

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (brlewis@MIT.EDU)
Wed Aug 30 10:30:43 1995

From: brlewis@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 95 10:30:35 -0400
To: Fool <yandros@MIT.EDU>
Cc: bugs@MIT.EDU, cwis-dev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: "[486] in cwis-dev"

   Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 05:31:50 -0400
   From: Fool <yandros@MIT.EDU>

   You guys really should get a mailing list for this.  I'll add you to
   infoagents if you like...

We expect a flurry of mail between semesters if we make major changes,
but it should be pretty quiet most of the time, so I don't think we need
yet another mailing list.

   o /mit/infoagents/cat is probably a mistake

   o You should be able to drop the inbsdbin symlink.  nothing's using it
     yet, and you'll be better off not starting it now and feeling like
     you should keep it forever.

I deleted these.

   o /mit/infoagents/arch/share/bin doesn't fit in with the `common
     practice' of new lockers; especially since you do have the more
     `common' /mit/infoagents/share directory already, which is the
     `right' way to do it.

Every arch/share/foo/bar needs to be symlinked as arch/*_*/foo/bar.
Things in the top-level share don't.  This makes a lot of sense to me
and eases automation of making symlinks.  I don't feel compelled to
change it just because some other people are doing something different.

   o your man directory doesn't have a whatis file.  You have to run
     catman on a sun AND a non-sun, not just on a sun. (yeah, this bites.
     I've been meaning to do something about it, but...)

fixed

   o users on sun workstations have reported getting warnings from
     netscape about references to
     `/mit/infoagents/lib/NetScape/XKeySymDB', which makes sense, since
     the directory is named `Netscape', not `NetScape'.  However, I can't
     find the reference to `NetScape' in the locker.  Perhaps this was
     already fixed and somehow I'm not noticing?

I tried it on a sun and didn't get the warning.  Someone must have fixed
it.

   o for most of the browsers, the help files should be copied into the
     locker rather than referenced over the network if possible (help in
     lynx shouldn't send you to Kansas :-)

Makes sense to me.  I think we should do it.

   o another thing that I never finished with infoagents and yet which I
     still insist is a good idea:

       the default startup page for each browser should be a
       browser-dependant file in the infoagents locker.  This page should
       contain announcements and information about the browser as well as
       links to the places one might `normally' start a browser.  This
       also means that browsers don't take 2 minutes to time out on
       startup if a particular server happens to go down.  (honestly, I
       just kept thinking of good things about this idea and I never
       really came up with any bad effect...)

That's an interesting idea.  I'm not sure what group it should be
brought to (cwis-help?), but I think it's worth talking about.

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