.
It is neither public domain, shareware or GNU copylefted.
The public distribution contains copyrighted materials
protected by national, European and International law including among
other international agreements: the Berne copyright convention.
The use of the public doctypes is "FREE" but requires
licensing.
The license protects your rights to use and develop (even commercial) products based upon BSn Doctype technology and source code. It protects BSn's right to its intellectual property.
BSn and CNIDR are providing the "public Doctypes" without charge and on a royalty free basis (even for commercial development) as a service to the Internet Community to support the development of Z39.50 and WWW (WebCat) S/R services and products.
The license also applies to non-commercial products, services and organizations. It does not distinguish between private, non-commerical or commercial use.
The license includes both rights and obligations. These apply to everyone: companies, schools, research institutions, government agencies, publishers, students, etc. Beyond the contract obligations set out in the license you also have a moral obligation to contribute.
If your or your organization has problems with any of the clauses in the license please contact Edward C. Zimmermann <edz@bsn.com> to discuss the issues. The wording of the license contract should not pose a stumbling block and its neither cast in stone nor handed down from transcendental so if there is a problem write or call us and we can discuss the matter.
The "public" BSn Doctypes, those distributed by MCNC/CNIDR as part of the Public Isite and Isearch distributions are different from the BSn Smart Doctypes used by BSn's commercial interBasis S/R software. The *FREE* public Doctypes are available from MCNC/CNIDR in the Isite/Isearch distributions and NOT directly from BSn. Commercial support for all public doctypes or upgrades to interBasis are available directly from BSn.
Both are supported by BSn and features from each will be added in time to the other.
To meet the incredible demand for horizontal integration solutions,
Shrinkwrap versions of the interBasis server are planned for '97.
The target Operating systems will be SunOS, Solaris (SPARC, Intel
and PowerPC), Linux, Net/Open/FreeBSD (Intel and SPARC),
HP-UX, DEC OpenUnix, SGI Irix, IBM AIX, Windows-NT,
IBM OS/2 and AT&T Plan9. If you have another O/S
you can contact us but chances are that we won't support it,
in particular we have no plans to Support VM, Sinix, Ultrix, Multics
ITS, Tenex, TOPS-10, Tortus, Hare, Wilbur, Apollo O/S, Spring, NeXT/OS,
Apple System 7.x, Windows'95, Windows CE, NewtOS, AmigaOS, Atari
TOS, OS/9, PalmOS or CPM.
The main development platform is currently Solaris 2.5/2.6 for SPARC and this will be the first release. A beta-program for interBasis 2.0 SPARC is set to start this summer with a select group of qualified organizations. If your company or institution wishes to participate please contact Edward C. Zimmermann.
| Platform | Beta Start |
|---|---|
| Solaris/SPARC | Jul. '97 |
| Solaris/x86 | Aug. '97 |
| Linux/x86 | End '98 | BSD/x86 | Early '99 |
| Windows-NT (Intel) | Sep. '97 |
| Windows-NT (alpha) | Oct. '97 |
New releases will first be for Solaris SPARC followed within a few months by other platforms.
Price? Can't lift the covers on to that one (yet)... But we can assure you that the the shrink-wrap interBasis solutions will be....
Isearch 1.10 did not include many of these features.
BSn is committed to the free version and it is under continuing development and shall include, in time, as many features as is compatible with the public search engine.
TMC (Thinking Machines Corporation) did a great service and provided the first really usable Internet S/R with its WAIS technology. Today many sites continue to use the TMC WAIS, freeWais (CNIDR) or freeWAIS-sf encarnations. The WAIS experimental implementation played a key role in the wide spread acceptance of the message of Z39.50. These WAIS implementations are, however, flawed (contain many legacy code errors) and the Internet community should migrate to newer Z39.50 standard products.
The public collection of basic document handlers removes all the last hurdles to enable the development of quality Z39.50 and WebCat services.
The official ftp site for "public" Doctypes is ftp.cnidr.org.. They are bundled with Isearch/Isite. The latest public version is included with the Isearch Distribution. Check there to see if there's a more recent version than the one you're using.
If you are an interBasis customer the updates are relatively automatic and available from the GUI under the [Help] menu.
Yes. New versions will be available in future versions of the CNIDR's Isite/Isearch public distribution.
The META handling features of the HTML doctype as well as the HTML-- doctype are planned for release into an updated collection for Isite/Isearch in the very near future.
BSn's search engine used in its interBasis products is based on the Isearch architecture but many of the class implementations are quite different. Some classes have been substantially extended. BSn interBasis has a very long list of advanced features ranging from full international language support, substantial speed improvements, concurrent append/search for workflow fields of applications, more and enhanced doctypes and, and, and...
There are currently hundreds of sites. BSn's interBasis software is currenly being used in many large-scale projects for government and institutional customers.
Together Isearch and interBasis with their shared open and published design architecture are the leading fulltext search engines in use on the Internet today: Leading in features, installed base, quality and total cost of ownership but lacking in hype, advertising budgets, vapourware features, sales armies and NSDAQ stock price to push.
Using HTML as a record presentation syntax was not really standard in Z39.50. The "offical" way to represent structured data is to use GRS (Generic Record Syntax). GRS-1 support is in development. HTML is not really structured data but more a hypertext enriched SUTRS presentation.
HTML does not offer "attractively formatted output", thats the job of the browser. We have some HTML style sheets in the mill but for attractive format one really needs something else. Since our view is content driven, SGML with DSSSL is the preferred model. This offers both structured data and reasonable presentation control. One can generate RTF, PDF, PS etc. via DSSSL.
However limited it is, HTML is still a nice record presentation option (this week) for those origins that support it and, at least now, given the popularity of WWW gateways -- even in the library community--and the emerging NCs1 (those IBM/Oracle/Sun boxes) is an important option until the (long delayed) HyTime toolkit and browser technologies are more commonplace. HyTime too is not part of the standard (to be quite honest I am not even sure if HyTime will ever be part of a future Z39.50 standard) but given its an ISO Standard, supports structure, is suited to (and designed for) the needs for modelling Hyermedia, its more in the spirit of Z39.50 than HTML.
Compatibility with other Z39.50 vendors (interoperability) does not mean that one can't have non-standard but agreed upon extensions. If HTML is at the expense of SUTRS, MARC or GRS-1 then its a problem.. but this is not the case. Our philosophy is to leave the preferences to the origin: smart servers and clever (not dumb) clients.
Note: The ZIG has agreed to add a OID (108) for HTML presentation.
1) SMCC has announced availability of the < $1000
NCs
before the end of 1996.
interBasis has quite a few... from SGML to BibTeX to Mail, Binary files such as .gif, even an object oriented programable script language to develop ones own application specific doctypes, and loads more to come. See Doctype Contents.
The "Public" doctypes also includes a large and growing collection of native documents types. Please check the current distribution to see what doctypes are included.
Not all the doctypes and not all the features of BSn's Smart doctypes are currently available in the "public" distribution. On the other hand, a few doctypes such as EMACSINFO, are available in the "public" collection but not in BSn's suite (yet).
In preperation:
. We do custom doctype development on a project basis. Substantial rebattes are available should the requested doctype be interesting and seem an important addition to the doctype suite.
Contact BSn Sales for more information.
Yes. General questions should be directed to the Isite mailing list. To join the list send a message with subscribe <Your email> to isite-l-request@cnidr.org.
If you have found bugs or other problems with BSn's Doctypes you should send a bug report to BSn (see below).
Commerical support and project management are available on a contractual basis from BSn. Contact BSn for more information.
Yes all software has bugs. Our doctypes are probably no exception. Should you locate a bug please submit a report using the online trouble ticket form.