freeWAIS-sf anyone?

[Eric Lease Morgan]

Thomas Dowling wrote:

> Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 08:47:05 -0400
> From: "Thomas Dowling" <tdowling at ohiolink.edu>
> To: "web4lib" <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: freeWAIS-sf anyone?
> Message-ID: <00ae01be8bf5$4a70fe00$711e99c0 at ohiolink.edu>
> 
> Does anyone know where (or if) freeWAIS-sf is available nowadays?  It's
> old home page at the University of Dortmund seems to be defunct, and the
> several ftp sites I can find references to no longer have it.

FreeWAIS-sf is described at the following URL:

  http://ls6-www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/ir/projects/freeWAIS-sf/

But you are right, the link to the source data seems to not be working.

FreeWAIS-sf is a great indexer, especially if you want to index data
other than HTML files. If you index data other than HTML files, and you
want to provide access to your indexes via a Web browser, then you will
need SFgate, a program acting as a go-between HTTP and WAIS:

  http://ls6-www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/ir/projects/SFgate/

In order to get SFgate to work, you will need to install a perl module,
wais.pm available from CPAN.

I have always liked freeWAIS-sf. While difficult to install, it can
index a variety of data formats ranging from Unix mbox files to images
(filenames only) to HTML files. You can even create your own data
formats. It also provides field searching, Boolean logic, phrase
searching, and compound searches. Indexes can be searched via Web
browsers or Windows- or Macingtosh-based clients.

If the links continue to be broken, then I will give you my source
distributions. 
  
--
Eric "At Home" Lease Morgan
Digital Library Initiatives Department, NCSU Libraries
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/