List Archives at XyWWWeb sites; searching

[Peter Brown pbrown@xxxxxxxx]

 " >The archives of this list for 1994-98, which were deleted from the
" >U.Pa. server earlier this year, can now be downloaded

It goes without saying for those who *don't* need to consult these early
discussions that XyWrite can make searching these archives incredibly easy.
(Yes, you can SEARCH the archives on line, but why not have the entire thing
just milliseconds away, right under your fingers, in XyWrite?) For those who
*ought* to look through the archives for earlier discussions, it may be
useful for the gurus to describe the best way to find the info therein.

My own quick-and-dirty method (I use Xy 3.55 in full-screen mode with Win95)
is to download all the archive files and then copy/move the files into a
single directory (call it c:\xylist). Then dedicate a key (alt-shift-H--for
help, in my case) to the simple routine (in TABLE=ALT+SHIFT):

35=bc,s,e, ,c,:,\,x,y,l,i,s,t,\,*,.,*,/,/,cl

(35 is the keyboard number for 'h'.)

This puts your cursor in position to type a string for some topic the list
might have covered at some point since 1994.  Drawbacks: you have to work
from an empty screen; you have the XyWrite native search across files
problems of having to OPEN the file if you find something you want (or
CONTINUE, or STOP). There are far better search utilities now available
through this list, and, I imagine, good ways to index the material for even
more efficient retrieval (e.g., Orbis, I'd guess)--for which, over to the
next correspondent....

Peter Brown
pbrown@xxxxxxxx