Subject: Re: invitation

From: dwells (Don Wells)
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 16:10:55 EST

Anton,

anton koekemoer writes:
 > .. You may feel free
 > to take my list and incorporate it with what you currently have, ..

I have placed a copy of your page in my working area and will begin to
edit it. The process will take a few days, perhaps a week. I will post
to 'astroweb' when I have merged your data with ours.

 > .. I
 > would suspect that by this stage I'd have very few new resources to add.. 

That is not what I expect. You were invited to join us because several
of us looked at your list and saw data that we knew we didn't already
have.  Just from inspection of your list and from my knowledge of the
current master list, I expect at least 50 new records and will not be
surprised if the number is over 100. The reason that our current list
has 569 records is because it was made from *four* lists. Each merger
added 100+ records. I interpret these facts to mean that none of us
approached completeness, and that the merged list is still
incomplete. My present guess is that with our combined efforts our
master list will reach ~1000 records within six months. Not only did
we add records, we each added categories! You are continuing that
pattern with your schedule and lists-of-lists categories. Also, our
styles are subtly different, and that is also valuable.

 > .. URL http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/www/yp_master.html - is this
 > the current up-to-date mega-list? ..

Yes. I renamed the files several days ago, but for backwards
compatibility I aliased 'yp_master' to 'yp_topzone', one of the three
sort orders which are provided:

    yp_topzone.html		keys=URLs in "JANET" order
    yp_protoname.html		keys=protocol+name
    yp_name.html		keys=name

Currently I edit a file which is in the 'protoname' order, but I can
change that easily if some other order would be more convenient. Also,
it would be easy to generate other sort orders. Take a look at the
files in 

    file://fits.cv.nrao.edu/www/astroweb/

especially the Makefile and the dt*.awk programs. This directory is
where I work on the database. You are welcome to use the Makefile and
programs for any purpose you wish. I hope that you will find the bugs,
add new features, and produce better programs in whatever language you
prefer.

-Don