Alternate Views of the Jargon File
Lots of people have used the Jargon File as a test case for different
kinds of search and retrieval engines. Here are all the different
ways of viewing it that I have URLs for as of lte August 2000:
Current Versions (4.0.0 or later)
Most of the recent conversions have search capability but only crude ASCII
highlighting (they were generated from the info or ASCII
versions).
- UMEC's Jargon Server
- The form allows you to search, or get a random entry.
- http://leb.net/~tonyk/jargon/
- HTML generated from the flat-text version. Pretty generic.
- http://watson-net.com/jargon/
- This version has good support for searching and picking a random
term.
- http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon_search/
- Indexed with Excite.
- Arjan De Mes's View
- Arjan De Mes <mes@fwi.uva.nl> did this version at the University of
Amsterdam. It allows search on a conjunction of up to three keywords. Version
4.0.0.
- http://www.netmeg.net/jargon/
A rather nice conversion of 4.1.4 with search capabilty.
- Fortune file
Rob Kaper has written a script that converts the HTML version of the
File to a fortune-cookie file.
Old Versions
These versions are out of date.
-
The Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing
- borrowed a lot of Jargon File material, I'm not sure from which version.
- Hans DeWolf's WWW Jargon File
- This appears to be the best of the `rogue' conversions, except for the
lack of search capability. Crossreference-to-URL translation was apparently
done with a filter, and the results extensively hand-hacked (even including
indexes to lists of entries deleted in various versions!)
Foreign Language Translations
- Il Gergo Telematico
- Maurizio Codogno has done an Italian documnt he describes as a
"derivative work" or "spinoff" of the 3.0.0 Jargon File.
I know there are WAIS and other databases built from the Jargon File, but don't
have those URLs. If you know of an interesting one, send me mail.
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>