Welcome to HyperWais, a Hypercard stack for searching WAIS
(Wide Area Information Servers).
Packing list:
After you have uncompressed the archive, you should find:
- This file (README).
- The copyright file (COPYRIGHT).
- A Hypercard stack called HyperWais, which is a sample stack for searching WAIS databases. This stack contains a set of XCMDs which allow the stack to communicate (via Apple Events) with the "Wais Listener". There is also another stacks called HyperWais 12
for 12" monitors.
- A application called "Wais Listener", this is the Faceless Background Application (FBA) which allows the Hypercard stack to communicate with WAIS servers. This application just sits in the background and listens out to Apple Events. All you need to do is start it up. Note that the wais-listener will grab a chunk of memory (about 450K) which will be added to the system software in the "About this mac" box.
- Another application called "Wais Listener.debug", this is the same application as the Wais Listener but will have a visible debug window which will list out all the events/data received and events/data returned. You may want to use this application to see what is going on. Both "Wais Listener" and "Wais Listener.debug" create log files which can be looked at with any text editor.
- A folder called wais-sources where HyperWais stores the WAIS source description files.
- A folder called wais-documents where HyperWais stores some WAIS document files.
- A folder called wais-questions which does nothing at this time.
- Dont forget to read the release notes located in the Release Notes folder.
Other software you need:
To run HyperWais you will need system 7.0 and Hypercard 2.1.
Hypercard will have to be allocated 1500K of memory, this is
done using the "Get Info" menu in the Finder.
Starting up:
To start up you need to start the "Wais Listener" application, then start HyperWais. HyperWais will need the wais-sources folder and the wais-documents folder in the folder it is located in (this is in the archive and should be created automatically). Currently HyperWais understands TEXT, WSRC and PICT document types
but more document types can be added really easily.
Note that the "Wais Listener" needs MacTCP to communicate with wais sources.
You may want to place the "Wais Listener" in the startup folder located in the system folder. This will ensure that the "wais listener" is started up everytime you start up your mac.
Some limitations:
The "Wais Listener" will support any number of connections,
any numbe of open sources per connection, and number of
document headlines per connection and any number of
relevance feedback entries per connection. The main limitation
at this point is the amount of memory available to the "Wais
Listener'.
The connections can open simultaneously either by clients
located on the same mac as the "Wais Listener" or on a
different macintosh. This feature would enable you to set up a
"Wais Listener" gateway on one macintosh with a connection
to the Internet and have a number of other macintoshs using
apple talk to connect up to that Wais Listener.
Big Disclaimer:
This software is now pretty stable at this point and I have
stress tested it a lot and it has not given me any problems.
The Hypercard stack is not the best interface, but it serves as a good example with sample scripts, etc. I would hope that people develop their own stacks, the beauty of this is that you can!.
Note that most the routines you would need to create a new stack are in the stack script. A couple of handlers which parse source
files and add them to the
Also there are portions of the stack that could be speeded up such as the parsing of source files and storing of document files. I decided to hold out on those until the WAIS API becomes available.
Other Stuff:
The are in fact three components to the HyperWais software:
- There are a set of C routines which handle the MacTCP communications and the WAIS protocols. These can be linked in with any other applications which want to use WAIS.
- On top of the C routines, there is the module that handle the Apple Events and maps them to the C routines.
- There is also another Apple Event module which deals with the communication between the client program and the wais-listener.
All these modules are written using Think C 5.0.3. The source code is available for those which want it. I have used a standard
release of Think C (it will compile with no problems on
version 5.0.1, 5.0.2 and 5.0.3 of Think C) with no modifications
to the libraries.
I would be happy to hear from the people who use this software,
how they are using it and what they are doing with it.
