back2roots/padua/padua.7z/padua/text/Fishing.general

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From: [e-mail] (Fred Fish)
Subject: Fish CD's - General Info - Mar 94
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Date: Sat, 12 Mar 94 00:59:53 EST
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       G E N E R A L    C D - R O M    I N F O R M A T I O N

                  March 10, 1994

--------
OVERVIEW
--------

This document provides general information about my CD-ROM series, including
CD-ROM's that are in production and ones that are planned for the future.  It
includes all necessary details for ordering CD-ROM's and a sample order form
at the end.  This is currently the most comprehensive document I have for
answering questions about the CD-ROM's.

There are two CD-ROM series that are intended to meet significantly different
needs, and a one-time CD-ROM production that will contain the entire contents
of my floppy disk distribution once I reach disk 1000.

------------------------
WHY CD-ROM DISTRIBUTIONS
------------------------

== More Cost Effective ==

It is simply far more cost effective, both for me and for the library
subscribers, to distribute the library on CD-ROM's than on floppy disks. The
cost of a subscription to the floppy distribution averages about $40 per month
for less than 12Mb of new material per month.  A CD-ROM distribution is
expected to average about $20 per month for 50-150Mb of new material per
month, assuming there actually is that much available.  Thus I expect to be
able to supply almost an order of magnitude more new material at about half
the average cost of a floppy subscription during the same period.

== Multiple Distribution Formats ==

With the floppy distributions, the name of the game is sometimes to see just
how much material can be crammed onto a single floppy.  There is almost always
a tradeoff between the convenience of having the material in unarchived format
and the desire to get as much material as possible into a new release, or to
make something fit on a single floppy.  A significant amount of time actually
goes into juggling things around until a set of 10 floppies achieves the
desired density of 95-100% full.

In some cases, material has to be rejected since it is simply too large for a
floppy distribution.  This is one reason why there are not very many
animations or large graphics images in the floppy library.

With a CD-ROM distribution, we get the best of both worlds.  Given a vastly
larger amount of space, the new material can be distributed directly in two
forms: an unarchived (ready-to-run) form, and an archived (BBS-ready) form, on
the same media.  This is how the FreshFish CD-ROM is organized.  The
FrozenFish CD-ROM's that are scheduled for release after each third FreshFish
CD-ROM will eventually contain only the BBS-ready form of new material from as
many previous FreshFish CD-ROM's as will fit on a single CD-ROM.

-------------------------------------
COORDINATION WITH FLOPPY DISTRIBUTION
-------------------------------------

== Timing of Floppy Releases ==

For the past several years, I've released floppy disks in batches of 10, with
a new batch being released about every 2 to 6 weeks.  Beginning with the first
FreshFish CD-ROM, the release of floppy disks has been tied to the release of
the CD-ROM master to pro duction.

It is expected that when each new FreshFish CD-ROM is released there will be
15-25 floppy disks that are released at the same time, the contents of which
will make up some fraction of the new material that is included on the
FreshFish CD-ROM.  Note that not all the new material will be contained on the
floppy disks; the only way to get all the new material is via the CD-ROM.

== Migration to CD-ROM Only Distributions ==

Once the library reaches disk 1000, I will not be doing any more floppy
releases and the library will move to CD-ROM only.  Part of the reason for
delaying the move to CD-ROM and running both distributions in parallel is to
allow people time to acquire CD-ROM drives, and part of the reason is that it
would be a shame to get this close to disk 1000 and not reach it.  After the
release of disk 1000, there will be a two CD-ROM set called GoldFish, that is
a complete archive of the 1000 floppy disk library (see below).

When I first announced several months ago that I would cease doing floppy
based distributions at disk 1000, a number of organizations and individuals
inquired about taking over this job and continuing the library past disk 1000,
with my "official blessing".  I have selected Amazing Computing (PIM
Publications) for this job, based on their longtime commitment to the Amiga.

The conditions of continuing to keep my endorsement as the official
continuation of the floppy based library include adherence to my standards for
quality, production values (look and feel), and free redistribution of the
resulting work.  The plan is that they will select the best bits and pieces
off each FreshFish CD-ROM, and organize new floppy releases using this
material.  They may of course, decide to incorporate material from other
sources as well.

--------------------
THE FRESHFISH CD-ROM
--------------------

== Goals ==

The FreshFish CD-ROM is designed to meet the needs of users who want copies of
new releases of material as soon as practical with a CD-ROM distribution.
Depending upon when the material was received in the CD-ROM production cycle,
and the time to go from CD-ROM master to production CD-ROM's, there should be
an average latency of about three to six weeks between receiving new material
and its availability on a FreshFish CD-ROM.  This CD-ROM is currently on about
an 8 week production cycle, and typically contains 50-100 Mb of new software
with each release.  Eventually I hope to increase the amount of new material
to 200 Mb or more with each release.

== History ==

As of 10-Mar-94 three FreshFish CD-ROM's have been produced.  The October 1993
CD-ROM went into production in late October, however because of a virus on the
CD-ROM, most copies were destroyed and replaced with another production run in
mid November.  The December 1993 CD-ROM was completed in late December, but
because of holiday delays, did not go into production until early January
1994.  The March/April 1994 CD-ROM was completed in the first week of March
and went into production about a week later.  For the first two CD-ROM's, they
were named after the month in which the work was done to produce them.
Starting with the third FreshFish CD-ROM, I decided to do like magazines do,
and name them after the period of time over which they are expected to be
current before the next release comes out.  Only about 10 of the October 1993
CD-ROM are still available.  The December 1993 CD-ROM is currently sold out
and no more production runs are planned.

== Structure ==

Since there is not enough new material of sufficient quality released every
couple of months to fill a CD-ROM (or enough time to organize it if it was
available), I include some other material on the FreshFish CD-ROM to make
effective use of the available space.  Each FreshFish CD-ROM is organized into
several different sections:

   o    A overview section containing information about the library,
    this particular CD-ROM, hot breaking news, etc.

   o    A section containing material that is newly released with
    this CD-ROM, in ready-to-run (unarchived) form.

   o    A section containing material that is newly released with
    this CD-ROM, in BBS-ready (archived) form.

   o    A section containing installed versions of popular tools
    that are anticipated to be released in updated form on each
    CD-ROM.  By leaving the CD-ROM mounted, you can potentially
    free up several hundred megabytes of hard disk space to use
    for other purposes.  Of course the tools can still be copied
    from the CD-ROM to a hard drive if you prefer the faster
    access speed of the hard drive or don't wish to leave the
    CD-ROM mounted all the time.  If this section gets too
    large, it may eventually be split off onto a separate tools
    CD-ROM.

   o    A "filler" section.  Whatever space remains after putting
    everything else on the CD-ROM will be filled with selected
    material from a previous CD-ROM or from the floppy based
    library distributions.  This may or may not include all the
    new material from the previous CD-ROM, depending upon space
    available.  The intention is that users will be able to
    order every other FreshFish CD-ROM (at least in the
    beginning) and because of the over lap, not miss any new
    material.

---------------------
THE FROZENFISH CD-ROM
---------------------

== Goals ==

This CD-ROM is intended to meet the needs of users who prefer to get their
doses of new material in larger chunks over longer intervals.  It also
provides a way for BBS operators to have the maximal amount of recently
released new material on-line using a single CD-ROM.  Eventually all of the
material on the FrozenFish CD-ROM's will be in the BBS-ready format.

== History ==

The current plans are for a FrozenFish CD-ROM to be produced after every third
FreshFish CD-ROM.  The first FrozenFish CD-ROM is currently under construction
and should be available in late March.  Future FrozenFish CD-ROM's are
expected to be released approximately every 6 months or so.

== Structure ==

Each FrozenFish CD-ROM will contain all the new material from each of the
previous FreshFish CD-ROM's, up to the limit of avail able previous FreshFish
CD-ROM's or reaching the maximum capacity of a CD-ROM, whichever comes first.
For the first couple FrozenFish CD-ROM's there will probably not be enough
older CD-ROM material to fill it, so material will probably be included from
the floppy distribution, starting with the latest disk and working backwards
until the CD-ROM is full.  For the first FrozenFish CD-ROM, this will probably
include the entire contents of floppy disks 1-975.

Even though there is significant overlap in coverage of material between the
FreshFish and FrozenFish CD-ROM's, they present the material in vastly
different ways and are targeted at different types of users.

-------------------
THE GOLDFISH CD-ROM
-------------------

== Goals ==

This CD-ROM is intended to provide a complete archive of my 1000 disk floppy
library (once I reach disk 1000 of course) .  It can be used to produce master
floppy disks for further duplication and distribution, using a simple to use
program that is provided on the CD-ROM.  It can also be used by BBS or
anonymous ftp sites to provide convenient electronic access to all the
material from the floppy library.

== History ==

Much work has already been done on the GoldFish CD-ROM.  I am currently
working on the final 25 floppy disks (975-1000), on creating appropriate
database files to make it easy to find specific material, and on the
"files.bbs" files for BBS use.  This work is expected to be complete in late
March or early April, and the GoldFish CD-ROM should go into production
sometime in the first couple of weeks of April.

== Structure ==

The GoldFish CD-ROM will be a two CD set, in a single slimline jewel case, and
will contain the entire contents of the 1000 disk floppy library in both
archived (BBS ready) and unarchived form.  The first CD will contain disks
1-750 in unarchived form and the second CD will contain disks 751-1000 in
unarchived form as well as disks 1-1000 in archived form.  The price of this
two CD set is expected to be same as the FreshFish and FrozenFish CD-ROM's.

------------------------------------
COMPATIBILITY WITH NON-AMIGA SYSTEMS
------------------------------------

== ISO-9660 LEVELS ==

As I understand it, there are two levels to ISO-9660 compliance.  For level 1
compliance, the filename is limited to what is commonly called "8.3" format,
that is the filename can have two components, separated by the '.'  character,
where the first component is no longer than 8 characters and the second
component, commonly called the "extension", is limited to 3 characters.  For
level 2, the sum of the string lengths of each component cannot exceed 30
characters.

In addition, there are two "interchange attributes".  Attribute "A" specifies
that the filename must not contain any characters other than digits,
upper-case letters, and the underscore '_', except for the single allowed '.'
character.  Attribute "B" specifies that the filename can contain any
character.

== Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol ==

Only CD-ROM's that conform to level 1A are guaranteed to be readable on all
systems that support ISO-9660.  Because of this limitation, an extension to
the standard called the "Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol" has been developed
by the CD-ROM industry and is widely supported on a number of different
operating systems, including most UNIX systems and some MS-DOS and Apple
systems.

When read with a software driver that understands the Rock Ridge extensions, a
CD-ROM recorded with Rock Ridge extensions appears as a CD-ROM containing 30
character filenames with no restrictions on the characters used in filenames,
while still being ISO-9660 level 1A compliant and thus fully readable by
software drivers that do not understand the Rock Ridge extensions.  This is
how most of the rest of the CD-ROM industry produces and uses CD-ROM's that
are compatible between the different systems.

Unfortunately, support for the Rock Ridge extensions is not common in the
Amiga CD-ROM market, and probably will not be until Commodore's standard
CD-ROM mastering software and drivers support Rock Ridge.  The way Amiga
CD-ROM's preserve the ability to use long filenames with no limitations on the
character set, is to conform to level 2B of the ISO-9660 standard, and thus
are incompatible with systems that only support level 1A plus Rock Ridge
extensions.  Apparently this includes many (if not most) MS-DOS systems, and
quite a few UNIX systems.

== Bottom Line ==

The bottom line, is that I have no way to predict whether a specific non-Amiga
system will be able to correctly read my CD-ROM's (or any other Amiga CD-ROM's
that don't strictly conform to ISO-9660 level 1A).  In many cases, the only
way to know is to get a CD-ROM and try it.  The CD-ROM has a CRC list that can
be used to verify that all of the files can be found and read correctly, and
some non-Amiga users have reported complete success at accessing all the
files, but sometimes only after consulting their software or hardware vendor
for appropriate configuration information and patches to the system's driver
software.

---------------------
HOW TO ORDER CD-ROM'S
---------------------

== Per CD-ROM Price ==

Currently all CD-ROM's are priced at $19.95 plus shipping and handling, when
ordered directly from me.  The suggested retail price for copies purchased
through dealers and other distributors is $24.95 to $29.95.  Eventually I
expect the retail price to drop to match my direct order prices, once
production volumes reach suitable levels.

You can preorder as many disks as you would like.  Should it become necessary
to adjust the prices at a future date, customers with existing accounts at the
time of a rate change will always receive the lowest available rate, either
the rate in affect at the time of the order or the rate at the time of
shipment, whichever is lower.  So order now at $19.95 and always get the best
rate.

== Shipping and Handling Charges ==

Shipping and handling is $3 per package of up to 4 CD-ROM's for first class
mail shipments within the USA, or airmail shipments to Canada or Mexico.  For
all other destinations, shipping and handling is $5 per package of up to 4
CD-ROM's and is done via small packet airmail.  For orders of multiple copies
of CD-ROM's, such that more than one CD-ROM would be shipped in a single
package (ordering 6 copies of each FreshFish CD-ROM for example), use $3 or $5
per set, or partial set, of 4 CD-ROM's as follows:

    Total CD-ROM's        USA, Canada
    in package        or Mexico    Other
    ----------        -----------    -----

    1-4            $3        $5

    5-8            $6        $10

    9-12            $9        $15

    13-16            $12        $20

    etc...

Special arrangements such as Federal Express are available for a $25 special
handling fee per shipment, plus actual shipping charges.  For most overseas
destinations, Federal Express costs approximately $50-$100 for packages
containing up to 25 CD-ROM's.

== Address For Ordering ==

You can order CD-ROM's using the same address as for the floppy distribution.
Note that my address has changed recently.  The new address is:

    Amiga Library Services
    610 N. Alma School Road, Suite 18
    Chandler, AZ  85224-3687
    USA

Orders can be FAX'd to:

    [phone]  (FAX only, no phone orders via voice)

Payment can be made via:

    o    cash  (suggest registered mail)

    o    check, money order, international bank draft (payable in U.S. dollars)

    o    credit card (VISA or MasterCard).

Be sure to state in your order which CD-ROM's you want and include the
appropriate shipping and handling as indicated above.  As with the floppy
distributions, funds not immediately used will go into an escrow account
(fully refundable at any time), to be charged against as CD-ROM's are shipped.

If you already have an account for the floppy distribution, you can transfer
to the CD-ROM account, and automatically switch over to the CD-ROM
distribution, by simply notifying me that this is what you'd like to do.

== Credit Card Orders ==

I am not currently set up to do automatic credit card charges upon each
release of a CD-ROM.  Because of the amount of work required to manually
process credit card orders, I encourage people that know they are going to
want to obtain CD-ROM's on a regular basis, and pay with a credit card, to
preorder several CD-ROM's on a single credit card charge.  Any unused balance
is fully refund able, of course.

If you order with a credit card, please include a statement with your order
that you agree to have the charge made to your card be fore delivery of the
CD-ROM's, subject to full refund on demand of any unused portion.  If you FAX
in an order to be paid via credit card, please sign it somewhere.

----------------------------------------
REDISTRIBUTION and COMPILATION COPYRIGHT
----------------------------------------

== Free Redistribution Will Continue ==

The main focus of the library will be to continue to supply freely redistri-
butable software.  That is, if a user wishes to take something off of the
CD-ROM and distribute it directly to other users, or make it available for
electronic access, no permission is needed from me to do so. There may however
be a small number of files on the CD-ROM which are not distributable, if they
are licensed from third parties to make the CD-ROM more usable.  For example,
this might include all the necessary files from Commodore to make the CD-ROM
usable in a CDTV or CD32, or it might include all the Amiga header files to
make gcc more usable.  There will be a list of all files on each CD-ROM that
fall into this category.  People wishing to redistribute material from a
CD-ROM will be responsible for sanitizing these files out of their
redistribution.

== Compilation Copyright ==

I struggled quite a while with this issue.  I've always explicitly disclaimed
a compilation copyright on the floppy distribution, mostly to make it simple
for users to redistribute complete floppies, or the collection as a whole.  It
would not have been feasible to have a single source for the floppy based
distribution and have the library achieve the popularity that it has today.

However, CD-ROM's change the entire picture.  It is anticipated that there
will eventually be almost an order of magnitude more time and effort put into
acquiring and organizing the material on each CD-ROM, than what goes into the
current floppy distribution.  This is mostly because it is anticipated that
there will eventually be an order of magnitude more material to organize.

So instead of 50 hours or so of work spread out over several weeks to organize
the material on 10 floppy disks, it takes several people, working the
equivalent of a full time job, several weeks to produce each CD-ROM. As with
the floppy distribution, a significant percentage of the cost of each CD-ROM
goes towards compensating various people for this labor.  There are also
significantly higher fixed monthly costs associated with maintaining or
contracting for the necessary equipment and software to produce CD-ROM's.

In short, CD-ROM's bring a slightly more commercial flavor to the library (at
least at the point of origin) than what has been traditional in the past for
the floppy based distribution.  However I will always strive to keep costs
down and produce a CD-ROM that is an excellent value for the price.  I hope
the user community will understand the need for this change.

For these reasons, I have decided that all CD-ROM's will have a compilation
copyright, but the only restriction will be that they cannot be "cloned" and
the material redistributed on CD-ROM or similarly priced optical media without
prior permission, nor can they be used as the basis for generating a
substantially similar CD-ROM distribution.  There are no restrictions on
mounting the CD-ROM and making its contents widely available for electronic
distribution, copying the entire contents of the CD-ROM to non-optical media
such as hard drives or tape, or copying any of the contents to media of much
smaller capacity like floppy disks.

------------------
PRODUCT-INFO FILES
------------------

Material included in future CD-ROM distributions will be accompanied by a file
that contains information about the material, for various database programs or
other tools to use to index specific types of material, find specific
programs, etc.  This file, currently called a "Product-Info" file, contains
important information like the program name, version number, author
information, short and long descriptions, etc.  A specification exists
(included on the March/April FreshFish CD-ROM in the Information directory)
which authors can follow to generate appropriate Product-Info files for
previously released material or future releases.

Most of the work I will be doing for the FrozenFish and GoldFish CD-ROM's
involves generating these Product-Info files so they can be used to build
description files for BBS systems, databases for indexing tools included on
the CD-ROM, etc.  Currently I have a file tree containing more than 7000
Product-Info files that cover all 975 disks in the floppy library and much of
the material on the previous three FreshFish CD-ROM's.  Less than 10% of these
were generated manually, the bulk of them were generated by mechanical
translation of existing Contents files.

Since manually generating accurate Product-Info files for previous releases is
a massive effort, I am calling on all authors and other interested parties for
help.  Ideally, the author of specific material should submit updated
Product-Info files, but anyone is free to do so.  The tree of all current
Product-Info files is periodically uploaded to aminet systems, in the
fish/docs directory, under names like pifiles-MMDD.lha, so these can be used
as a starting point.  The archive also contains the latest Product-Info file
specification.

---------------------------
ISO-9660 MASTERING SOFTWARE
---------------------------

Starting with the March/April FreshFish CD-ROM, I switched mastering software.
I am now using an enhanced version of mkisofs, which was written by Eric
Youngdale, and enhanced by Frank Munkert to make it suitable for generating
the "Amiga flavor" of ISO-9660 (I.E. Level 2B).  This software is covered by
the GPL (GNU General Public License) and once a few more enhancements are
made, myself or Frank will be working to get the changes folded back into the
version maintained by Eric.  In any case, the pack age will be available for
anyone to use.  Hopefully someone with detailed knowledge of Amiga Intuition
programming will write a graphical user interface for it, thus making it even
easier to use.

The cost of CD-R (write once CD drives) continues to drop.  I suspect that
within a couple years, if not sooner, the price will be within the range that
makes it reasonable for serious hobbiests, or computer clubs, to obtain.  The
availability of this software, and future generations of it, will make it very
easy for Amiga users to generate their own CD-ROM compatible CD's.

== CDTV/CD32 BOOTING ==

One of the current side effects of switching to different mastering software
is that support for directly booting the CD-ROM's on the CDTV/CD32 has been
suspended.  Because of the relatively high license fees that needed to be paid
to Commodore for each CD-ROM sold (more than the cost of actually pressing the
CD-ROM), and the relatively small numbers of users that currently actually
make use of this feature, I have decided to produce royalty free CD-ROM's for
the moment.  The money previously spent on these fees can be put to better use
to improve the CD-ROM distributions for the vast majority of current users
that don't care about CDTV or CD32 bootability.

This does not mean that the CD-ROM's cannot be used on a CDTV or CD32, just
that users that wish to use them must acquire additional hardware.  In the
case of the CDTV, all that is required is a floppy disk drive to boot from,
and a suitable bootable Work bench disk.  In the case of the CD32, an
additional requirement is an expansion box that provides a floppy disk port.
Such expansion boxes are currently under development by a number of different
companies and/or already available in certain markets.

It is possible that when demand warrants it, I may do special versions of the
CD-ROM's that are CDTV/CD32 bootable, or else pro duce CD-ROM's that are
targeted directly for CDTV/CD32 users with considerably different content than
current CD-ROM's.  So these moves do not mean I am abandoning CDTV/CD32 users,
or ignoring their needs, just that I am attempting to make the best use of
available resources, and the payment of license fees on every CD-ROM was not
judged to be cost effective at this time.



============================================================================

Name and    ____________________________________________________________

Address        ____________________________________________________________

        ____________________________________________________________

        ____________________________________________________________

        ____________________________________________________________


Phone Numbers:    Home: ________________________ Work: _______________________
(optional)
        FAX:  ________________________

Email Address:  ____________________________________________________________


============================================================================

DESCRIPTION                    QUANT    UNIT COST     TOTAL


Previous FreshFish  [ ] Oct93  [ ] Mar94    _____  *  $19.95  =  _______
 Note: Dec93 is sold out, 10 Oct93 left

Future FreshFish,  ______ each release        _____  *  $19.95  =  _______
 Start with [ ] next [ ] other:____________

FrozenFish  (BBS ready)                _____  *  $19.95  =  _______
  (available end of March 1994)

GoldFish (1000 disk archive - 2 CD set)        _____  *  $19.95  =  _______
  (available mid April 1994)

                             SUB-TOTAL =>  _________

Add $3 per CD-ROM for shipping and handling if within USA,
  Canada, or Mexico.                           =>   +_______
Add $5 per CD-ROM for other destinations (sent airmail).

                                 TOTAL =>  _________


============================================================================

SELECT PAYMENT METHOD DESIRED:

[]  Cash, check, money order, or bank draft (Payable in U.S. dollars)

[]  VISA or
[]  MasterCard  Number: ________________________________ Expires: __________

    Full Name on Card:  ____________________________________________________

    Amount to Charge:  $__________

    I understand that the total amount shown above will be charged to
    the above described account upon receipt of order, and that in the
    event that not all of the requested CD-ROMs are received in a timely
    manner, any unused portion will be fully refundable upon demand.

    Sign Here: __________________________________________


============================================================================

Send or FAX your completed order to:    Amiga Library Services
                    610 N. Alma School Road, Suite 18
FAX: [phone]            Chandler, AZ  85224-3687
(no voice phone orders, FAX only)    USA

============================================================================

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