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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.406 Geoff Allen <geoff@pmafire.inel.gov> . .. gibbsm@ll.mit.edu (MargAret D. Gibbs) ...... gjb@bullit.void.oz.au (Greg Black) .. . Gerben 'P' Vos <gpvos@cs.vu.nl> ...... grabiner@math.harvard.edu ...... graham@cs.washington.edu (Stephen Graham) ...... gregf@tfs.COM (Greg Faulk) ...... grether@cvtserv1.verfahrenstechnik.uni-stuttgart.de (Bernd Grether (sorescu))...... gritton@byu.edu ...... heiby@chg.mcd.mot.com (Ron Heiby) ...... heiko@groucho.chemie.fu-berlin.de (Heiko Schlichting) ...... heinau@groucho.chemie.fu-berlin.de (Vera Heinau) ...... B.J. 19-Nov-1992 1750 <herbison@erlang.enet.dec.com> ...... Herve.Schauer@ensta.fr (Herve Schauer) ...... huff@MCCLB0.MED.NYU.EDU (Edward J. Huff) ...... ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor) ...... Ian Rogers <ianr@cogs.sussex.ac.uk> ...... irilyth@FENRIS.CLAREMONT.EDU (Josh Smith) ...... Irving_Wolfe <Irving_Wolfe@happy-man.com> ...... iwj@cam-orl.co.uk (Ian Jackson) ...... J Lee Jaap <J.L.Jaap@larc.nasa.gov> ...... jamesm@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Mark James) ...... bagend!jan@gatech.edu (Jan Isley) ...... John Bartol <jbart@jbartol.zadall> ...... jbettis@cse.unl.edu (jeremy bettis) .... . Juergen Christoffel <jc@slim.gmd.de> ...... John DiMarco <jdd@cdf.toronto.edu> ...... jduncan@jupiter.nmt.edu (John Duncan) ...... jgm@cs.brown.edu (Jonathan Monsarrat) ...... jh@nbn.com (John Harkin) ...... jhawk@panix.com (John Hawkinson) .... "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@pit-manager.MIT.EDU> ...... James Mathiesen <JIM@BROWNVM.brown.edu> ...... jjf@dsbc.icl.co.uk (J J Farrell) ...... Jay Maynard <jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu> ...... jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) ...... <joel@postgres.berkeley.edu> ...... Johann.Tonsing@ee.up.ac.za ...... john@iastate.edu ...... Lord Yak Da Hairy <johny@cogs.sussex.ac.uk> ...... Jonathan Gowland <jonog@g2syd.genasys.com.au> ...... jra@barracuda.wti.com (Jim Atkinson) ...... jrb4599@usl.edu (Blackwell James R) ..... kaminski@netcom.com (Peter Kaminski) ...... "Neeran M. Karnik" <karnik@cs.umn.edu> ...... karsten@tfl.dk ...... Kelly Derek Deyoe <kdeyoe+@cmu.edu> ...... echelon!kees@relay.nluug.nl (Kees Hendrikse) ...... kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty) ... .. konrad@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Bill Konrad) ...... Karleenus Schwartz Davis <ksdavis@silver.ucs.indiana.edu> ...... leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl ...... lhdsy1!lhdsy1.lahabra.chevron.com!shc@uunet.UU.NET ...... linimon@lonesome.com (Mark Linimon) ...... Lisa Bjarke <lisa@wilbur.dfrf.nasa.gov> ...... lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden, x2487) ...... Danny Schwendener <macman@bernina.ethz.ch> ...... Magnus Olsson <magnus@thep.lu.se> ...... Jeff Makey <makey@VisiCom.COM> ...... Marc.Desrochers@BRI.NRC.CA ...... markus@mwhh.hanse.de (Markus Witt) ...... marthag@athena.mit.edu ...... matwood@labhp13.cs.utah.edu (Mark Atwood) ...... mbm@dsbc.icl.co.uk (Malcolm Mladenovic) ...... Dan McDonald <MCDONALD@dallas.sil.org> ...... mcgregoa@COGNOS.COM (Alayne McGregor) ...... Martha Gunnarson <mg@wpi.edu> .. ... mgfrank@avernus.com (Marc G. Frank) ...... Magnus Holmberg <mho@stacken.kth.se> ...... mhpower@Athena.MIT.EDU ...... Michael.Shields@p1638.f349.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Michael Shields) ...... Martin Merry <mjm@hplb.hpl.hp.com> ...... Michael Quinn <MJQUINNUCC.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu> ...... mmt@RedBrick.COM (Maxime Taksar KC6ZPS) ...... Monty Solomon <monty@proponent.com> ...... mphbj639@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu (Stephen Cristol) ...... muir@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (David Muir Sharnoff) ...... Melissa Wauford <mwauford@UTKUX1.UTK.EDU> ...... Helge Nareid <nareid@due.unit.no> ...... neilb@scs.leeds.ac.uk ...... Ommund Oegaard <oegaard@itk.unit.no> ...... "M. Otto" <OTTO@vaxb.acs.unt.edu> ...... Peter Craig <P.S.Craig@durham.ac.uk> ...... pa@appmag.com (Pierre Asselin) ...... pae@stortek.com (Phil Earnhardt) ...... Paul Wells <pfw@wellserv.gwinnett.COM> ...... Phil.Richards@prg.ox.ac.uk ...... phoffman@holonet.net (Paul E. Hoffman) ...... pierre@kaboom.PRPA.Philips.COM (Pierre Uszynski) ...... prc <prc@gec-mrc.co.uk> ...... Paul W Schleck KD3FU <pschleck@cwis.unomaha.edu> ...... Pirawat Watanapongse <pw@cacs.usl.edu> ...... Joshua Randall <randall-joshua@YALE.EDU> ...... ron c carman <rccarm00@mik.uky.edu> ...... red@uhura.neoucom.EDU (Richard E. Depew) ...... rei2!fox@uunet.uu.net ...... rhb@mstr.hgc.edu (Roger H. Brown) ...... rich@boreas.whoi.edu (Richard Pawlowicz) ...... Richard.Mathews@West.Sun.COM (Richard M. Mathews) ...... rick@crick.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu (Richard H. Miller) ...... rissa@world.std.com (Patricia O Tuama) ...... rnichols@ihlpm.att.com (Robert K Nichols) . roder@cco.caltech.edu (Brenda J. Roder) ...... roger@prosun.first.gmd.de (Roger Holst) ...... romero@stat.tamu.edu (Ron Romero) ...... Eric Rossing <rossing@cs.hope.edu> ...... rowan@rigel.EPM.ORNL.GOV (Tom Rowan) ...... rrl@oclc.org (Ralph Levan) ...... rsk@gynko.circ.upenn.edu (Rich Kulawiec) ...... rthomson@dsd.es.com (Rich Thomson) ...... rtw@mtuxj.att.com ...... rv@cs.brown.edu (rodrigo vanegas) ...... rwhitby@research.canon.oz.au (Rod Whitby) ...... Sam.Falkner@Central.Sun.COM (Sam Falkner) ...... sarel@ford.ee.up.ac.za (Sarel Lugtenburg) ...... sartin@88OPEN.ORG ...... Saul Tannenbaum <SAUL_SY@hnrc.tufts.edu> ...... scott@zorch.sf-bay.org (Scott Hazen Mueller) ...... shrdlu@willow.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True) ...... simona@panix.com (Simona Nass) ...... sjsmith@cs.UMD.EDU (Stephen Joseph Smith) ...... Seth the Lesser <slb22@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu> ...... Jason Hunsaker <SLHW4@CC.USU.EDU> ...... slootman@evs2.uia.ac.be (Wim Slootmans) . .. Marc Moorcroft <smarry@zooid.guild.org> . . . sp0mikpa@edit.his.se (Mikael Parknert) ...... sridhar@asuvax.eas.asu.edu (Sridhar Venkataraman) ...... srogers@tad.eds.com (Steve Rogers) ...... Stefan Linnemann <Stefan.Linnemann@cri.leidenuniv.nl> ...... Stephan Niemz <stephan@sunlab.ka.sub.org> ...... Stephen Hebditch <steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk> ...... stu@valinor.mythical.com (Stu Labovitz) ...... tam@pythia.itkp.uni-bonn.de ...... Morten Tandle <tandle@pvv.unit.no> ...... tim@animal.gcs.co.nz (Tim Frost) ...... Timothy VanFosson <timv@ccad.uiowa.edu> ...... tjn@iastate.edu ...... tom_limoncelli@Warren.MENTORG.COM ...... tony@microware.co.uk (Tony Mountifield) ...... tonyd@ssc60.sbwk.nj.us (Tony DeBari) ...... "Tony (T.) Rice" <trice@bnr.ca> ...... Tim Pierce <twpierce@unix.amherst.edu> ...... UHAH013@VAX.RHBNC.AC.UK ...... wangc@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Carol Wang) . ... werner@cs.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig) ...... werner@SOE.Berkeley.Edu (John Werner) ...... wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi (Lars Wirzenius) ...... wjw@eb.ele.tue.nl (Willem Jan Withagen) .. wombat@nfinit.enet.dec.com ...... (The Crossjammer) <xjam@cork.CS.Berkeley.EDU> ...... "Yvonne Y. Yang" <yyy2t@holmes.acc.Virginia.EDU> ...... -- Jonathan Kamens jik@MIT.Edu MIT Information Systems/Athena Moderator, news.answers Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!jik From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Newsgroups: news.answers Subject: news.answers submission guidelines Supersedes: <news-answers-guidelines_722412017@athena.mit.edu> Followup-To: poster Date: 22 Dec 1992 06:01:30 GMT Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 490 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Distribution: world Expires: 4 Feb 1993 06:01:14 GMT Message-ID: <news-answers-guidelines_725004074@athena.mit.edu> Reply-To: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) NNTP-Posting-Host: pit-manager.mit.edu Archive-name: news-answers/guidelines Version: $Id: guidelines,v 1.39 1992/12/14 02:28:10 jik Exp $ In order to submit an FAQ posting to the news.answers newsgroup, you should first modify your posting to conform to the guidelines given below, in section I. Then, you should submit your posting to me using the instructions given below, in section II. Once your posting is approved, you will post it directly to news.answers and other newsgroups yourself; i.e., after approval, you no longer have to go through me at all to post. This is explained in more detail below. I. Submission guidelines A. Why the guidelines? There are three main reasons for the guidelines that are listed below. 1. Appropriateness Only periodic informational postings that are intended to be read by people belong in news.answers. The guidelines are meant to prevent other types of postings, including discussion of periodic informational postings, from appearing in the group. 2. Usefulness to people The newsgroup should be as useful as possible to the people who read it. Requirements such as effective "Subject:" and "Summary:" lines (see below) further this goal. 3. Automatic archiving One of the main points of news.answers is that it can be archived automatically in order to build up a database of periodic informational postings. Requirements such as the "Archive-name:" line further that goal. B. Required header fields There are two "headers" in a news.answers posting. The first is the normal header that any article posted to the USENET has. The second header, the "auxiliary header," is separated from the first by one or more blank lines. As far as the News software is concerned, the auxiliary header is just part of the body of the article; however, news.answers requires some information in it. The requirements for each of the two headers are discussed in detail below. Required headers are marked with "(R)", while optional ones are marked with "(O)". 1. The normal header a. Newsgroups (R) I need to know exactly what will appear in the Newsgroups line of the posting. Although the order of newsgroups on the line is not important from the point of view of the news software, I prefer to have news.answers listed last, since it is the least "relevant" of the listed newsgroups. Example: Newsgroups: comp.sys.foo,news.answers Note that your Newsgroups line should NOT contain only news.answers. FAQ postings should be cross-posted to news.answers from their home newsgroups, rather than being posted separately to news.answers. However, if you get approval for news.answers cross-posting in the middle of your "posting cycle," and you do not wish to wait until the next scheduled posting time to cross-post to news.answers, then you can post your FAQ only to news.answers. If you choose to do this, please make sure to let me know you are going to, and please do not do it more than once. b. Subject (R) The subject line of your posting should have some meaning outside of its home newsgroup(s). For example, instead of just "FAQ," you might have "<x> FAQ", where "<x>" is the name of the newsgroup or the topic being discussed. Furthermore, important information should appear near the beginning of the subject line, so that news readers that display article summaries don't cut off the important information. For example, instead of "Frequently Asked Questions about <x>," use "<x> Frequently asked Questions." Example: Subject: comp.sys.foo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) c. Followup-To (R) and Reply-To (O) Your posting must have a "Followup-To:" line in the header that directs followups to somewhere other than news.answers. You may choose to direct followups back to the home newsgroup of the FAQ, or to direct followups to the author of the FAQ, in which case "Followup-To: poster" is sufficient. That means that you actually put the word "poster" there, as specified in the RFC which describes the format of Usenet postings. Do NOT put an E-mail address in the "Followup-To:" field. If you forget the "Followup-To:" and I get mailed followups to your FAQ, I'm going to get peeved at you. Furthermore, your posting must have a valid E-mail reply address in the header, either in the "From:" field, or if not in "From:" then in "Reply-To:". Example: From: guru@foosys.com (Joe R. Programmer) Followup-To: comp.sys.foo Reply-To: faq-mail@foosys.com (FAQ Comments address) In this example, "guru" apparently wants mail about the FAQ to go to a different address than the rest of his mail. I've shown the "From:" header, because the version of the FAQ that you forward to me should show the "From:" header just as it will appear when the article is actually posted. d. Supersedes, Expires, References (O) It is a good idea to use "Supersedes:" and "Expires:" header lines to make sure that each version of your FAQ stays around until the next time it is posted. A useful tool for this is my perl FAQ poster. It is available from pit-manager.mit.edu, via anonymous ftp in the file /pub/post_faq/post_faq.shar, or via mail server (send mail to mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu with "send post_faq/post_faq.shar" in the body). Furthermore, if you are posting a multi-part FAQ posting or a series of related FAQ postings, it is a good idea to add a "References:" line to all of the postings except the first one, making the contents of that line the Message-ID of the first posting in the series. If you do this, then people who use threaded news readers will be able to manipulate the entire series as a single thread, including (for example) killing the entire thread if they're not interested or saving the entire thread to a file with one command. The perl FAQ poster mentioned above supports an option for doing this. Example: Expires: Fri, 1 May 1992 00:00:00 GMT Supersedes: <foo-faq_701650000@foosys.com> The date in the "Expires:" header should be far enough into the future that a new version of the FAQ will be posted before the one you're posting now expires. I've shown both headers in the format my post_faq script would use. I haven't shown a "References:" header, since the example posting I've been presenting is not part of a multi-part FAQ; if there were a "References:" header, it would contain a Message ID just like the "Supersedes:" header. e. Summary (O) You are encouraged to put a summary of the contents of your article in the Summary field of the header. Try to describe what your FAQ discusses, and aim your description at someone who may not actually be directly interested in the topic covered by your FAQ. There have been discussions about using the Summary fields of the FAQ postings in news.answers to construct a short "catalog" of the information available through news.answers, so think of the Summary field as a "catalog entry" for your FAQ. Note that header fields are allowed to span multiple lines, as long as the continuation lines after the first start with whitespace (at least one space or tab character). Example: Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers) about Foo computers. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the comp.sys.foo newsgroup. 2. The auxiliary header The auxiliary header looks like the main message header (i.e. "Field-name: field-value"), but is separated from the main message header by a blank line, as well as followed by a blank line separating it from the rest of the body of the message. The auxiliary header of this posting is: Archive-name: news-answers/guidelines Version: $Id: guidelines,v 1.39 1992/12/14 02:28:10 jik Exp $ a. Archive-name (R) In order to be cross-posted in news.answers, your posting must include an auxiliary archival header with an "Archive-name:" field. The archive name should be a short (14 characters or less, if at all possible, and if not, then each component of the name should be unique in the first 14 characters), one-word (hyphens allowed) tag identifying the FAQ. For example, the comp.unix.questions FAQ is "unix-faq" (which means that the auxiliary header contains "Archive-name: unix-faq"). Multi-part FAQs should be named "name/part1", "name/part2", etc. If you post a diff for your FAQ, it should be named "name/diff". If you post multiple diffs for a multi-part FAQ, they should be named "name/diff1", "name/diff2", etc. (if you want to use just one diff for a multi-part FAQ, you can juse use "name/diff" as its name). If you post a diff to a one-part posting, then the original FAQ should be named "name/part1" (although you can use a name besides "part1" if you think there is a more appropriate tag to identify the posting) and the diff should be named "name/diff". Avoid periods in the archive name, because some operating systems choke on them; if you must have word separators, use hyphens rather than periods. Please pick the archive name that you would like to use for your posting, and include the "Archive-name:" line with that archive name in it, when submitting to news.answers. If there is some problem with it, or if I would like to suggest an alternate name, I will let you know. Example: Archive-name: foo-faq If your posting already has an "Archive-name:" line which is not a valid news.answers archive name, and you do not want to change it, you can use a "News-answers-archive-name:" header line instead. b. Other archive names (O) The software which builds the FAQ archive on pit-manager.mit.edu (see the "Introduction to the news.answers newsgroup" posting for more information about it) automatically uses the "Archive-name:" line to determine the file name in which to save an FAQ, when saving it in any of the "answers" newsgroups (news.answers, rec.aviation.answers, etc.). Furthermore, if you have a field of the form "Newsgroup-name-archive-name: name" in your FAQ's auxiliary header (see the example below), the specified archive name will be used to save in the specified newsgroup. Such a newsgroup-specific archive name overrides any generic "Archive-name:" line. When an archive name for an FAQ cannot be determined in either of the ways mentioned above, the Subject line of the posting (with some minor modifications) is used as its file name. For example, if you have this in your normal header: Newsroups: comp.foo,comp.bar,comp.answers,news.answers Subject Comp.foo FAQ and this in your auxiliary header: Archive-name: foo-faq Comp-bar-archive-name: bar-faq then the posting will be saved as "foo-faq" in comp.answers and news.answers (because they are both "answers" newsgroups and will therefore use the Archive-name line), as "bar-faq" in comp.bar, and as "Comp.foo_FAQ" in comp.foo. If you do decide to specify additional archive names in your posting, please obey the guidelines for archive names given above. b. Last-modified, Version (O) You can have other fields in the auxiliary header, if you want. Two common ones are "Last-modified:" and "Version:". Example: Last-modified: 1992/03/25 Version: 2.5 3. Sample FAQ headers Putting together the examples I've given above, your FAQ's headers (or, at least, the ones you submit to me) might look like this: From: guru@foosys.com (Joe R. Programmer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.foo,news.answers Subject: comp.sys.foo FAQ Followup-To: comp.sys.foo Reply-To: faq-mail@foosys.com (FAQ Comments address) Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers) about Foo computers. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the comp.sys.foo newsgroup. Expires: Fri, 1 May 1992 00:00:00 GMT Supersedes: <foo-faq_701650000@foosys.com> Archive-name: foo-faq Last-modified: 1992/03/25 Version: 2.5 Note that the blank line separating the normal header from the auxiliary header must be completely blank, i.e., no tabs or spaces, and that there must also be one or more completely blank lines after the auxiliary header. Of course, you can include in the posting header any of the other standard USENET header fields that have not been discussed here. C. Mailing lists for FAQ maintainers Maintainers of FAQs are strongly urged to join the faq-maintainers mailing list, which is used for discussion about the news.answers newsgroup and the maintenance of USENET FAQs. If you don't want to be on the discussion list, you may wish to join the faq-maintainers-announce list, which will be used only for announcements, instead. Note that subscribers to faq-maintainers automatically receive messages sent to faq-maintainers-announce. When submitting your FAQ, make sure to let me know whether or not you want to be on one of the lists. D. List of Periodic Informational Postings Unless you tell me otherwise, I will add any postings submitted to news.answers to the "List of Periodic Informational Postings" (LoPIP) articles which appear in news.answers, news.lists, and news.announce.newusers. Therefore, in addition to seeing a copy of your posting when you submit it to news.answers, I also need you to tell me the frequency at which you intend to post it, since the LoPIP posting contains a frequency field for each entry in it. If you do not have copies of the LoPIP postings and would like to get them, to see what they're like or to check if your FAQ is already listed, see the instructions at the end of this message. E. Article approval Once all of the other issues listed in this posting are resolved, you will be given approval to cross-post your FAQ to news.answers. You will have to indicate in the header of your posting that such approval has been given, or the posting will be mailed to me instead of posted. Note that I am intentionally being somewhat vague about what this entails. When I approve your posting for news.answers, I will provide more specific instructions. II. Submission instructions If you have a posting which you wish to submit to news.answers, you should first read the guidelines listed above and modify your posting to conform to them. Then, you should submit it by posting it to the news.answers newsgroup, assuming that the software on the poster's site works properly and will forward the posting to the news.answers moderator, or by mailing it to the news.answers submission address, news-answers@MIT.Edu. ONLY SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE MAILED TO THAT ADDRESS. If there is some commentary or explanation that needs to be made, it should be mailed in a separate message to news-answers-request@MIT.Edu, which is the moderator contact address for any news.answers-related business.