comp.sources.apple2 Status/Web Page Announcement

[jac@landslide.openix.com (Jonathan A. Chandross)]

As the moderator for comp.sources.apple2, I'm responding to some of
the comments I saw posted.  The newsgroup has had very low activity
since last fall, but is not dead.  I have been enormously busy for
the past year, which is why I haven't been keeping up on things as
well as I should have.  For this I apologize.

(I will say that most of my time has gone into a black hole for the
past five years.  I'm not being lazy, I'm just stretched very thin
time-wise.  Things are getting better, though, and I should have
some more time to handle things like this.)

For starters, there is a web page containing the full comp.sources.apple2
archives at:
	http://www.openix.com/~jac
You can also ftp them from:
	ftp://ftp.openix.com/ftp/jac/comp.sources.apple2/*.gz
	ftp://ftp.sterling.com/usenet/comp.sources.apple2/*

The web page is the best way to download things, since you are guaranteed
to get the latest version.  (I set up links so that the older versions
indicate that a newer version exists.)

You can download by program category or by chronological order.  Matthew
Fischer has already suggest a page to allow downloading by platform, but,
I, alas, have not had time to create one yet.

If you have other comments, please send them to me.

gdr@eddore.myrias.com (Devin Reade) wrote:
> As long as the comp.sources.apple2 newsgroup exists, there should
> still be reference to the unpaff (upaff?) program.  The 'obsolete'
> section (with a caveat that it is -- technically -- not obsolete) would
> probably be sufficient.

You can find the paaf/upaaf utilities on my web page.  They are very
simple archive programs and cannot do things like create directories,
but they will work on any Apple //.  The idea was to have a human
readable archive format that would work on any platform, something
that the more complex packages do not alwasy lend themselves to.

nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates) wrote:
>   In the past 4 years, I have yet to see _one_ program posted to
> comp.sources.apple2. [And even submitted a few that never were posted,
> like my Gamehacker CDA source code]

This is not true.  The last posting was last fall.  I will be posting
an implementation of IDEA as soon as the sysadmins here create a
directory that is export restricted.  (The problem is that United
States law prohibits export of cryptographic software.  Matt Fischer
has been enormously patient with me on this, and I thank him again
for his willingness to wait.)  I'll be posting an announcement about
it and you can ftp it yourself or get it from the web page.  (I have
enough grief in my life without problems caused by exporting software.)

Much of the work is in creating the Read.Me's which must contain enough
information to compile and use the program.  Sometimes this can take a
bit of time to create, both my time and the developer's time.  I don't
always remember to keep after the developer to review the latest draft,
and I don't always remember to send the developer the latest draft.

And I hate to do things like this in public, but Nathan you will recall
that I did write up a Read.Me for the package and send it to you for
some comments, and it went back and forth a number of times.  (I still
have the latest draft.)  I must confess that I likely did drop the ball
on this, but it is not the cast that I never responded to you.  I'll
send you what I have so we can move this forward.  Sorry for the
misunderstanding, and sorry that your quite useful programs have not
been properly handled.


Jonathan A. Chandross
jac@openix.com