Re: Apple2 archive at grind.isca.uiowa.edu

[glyn@gsb013.cs.ualberta.ca (Reade Glyn Devin)]

> In article <1993Sep23.165405.7872@news.weeg.uiowa.edu>,
> Steven Nelson <snelson@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote:

> >Keep the discussion going!  Everyone think about an archive organization
> >and present a clear sample or model for the extremely well mannered people
> >on csa2 to constructively criticise.  (Flame suits optional :-) )

[This is not a flame -- take it as intended, a constructive criticism.]

The biggest thing I see wrong with the grind site is the organization of
it's directories.  Take two for example:  pgms and utils -- these
directories are each 16k.  That's not the total size of files each contains,
but rather the size of the directory structure needed to list the entries.

These directories need to be broken down further.  We have utils, but what
_kind_ of utils?  We could break these up into hard disk utils,
editors/readers, archivers, etc.  The same goes for pgms (an even more
generic label).  These are starting to resemble the /incoming directory
at pindarus ;)

Those responsible for doing the reorg at cco.caltech did a good job; the
structure is logical, directories are of reasonable size, and the NEW.FILES
and HOT.FILES are a nice touch that not only save the time of the user,
but also lessen the load on the telnet system since time isn't spent looking
for new stuff.  I would strongly suggest looking at the caltech archive
as a good example on how to organize the grind site.

On the subject of file suffixes, I am a supporter of them for reasons
already stated by others.

--
        G. Devin Reade          glyn@cs.ualberta.ca        <-- preferred
                                glynr@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca