Organizing Work & Making Software Choices

This is a menu of the topics on this page (click on any): Gathering archives Publishing archives Rendering archives for publication The Bus/Truck Test .

This describes the means by which on-line archives are being created for USMS, explains how APL is being used, and invites others in USMS to respond and/or participate.

The work and the products can be viewed in 3 parts.

Gathering archives

The greatest part of the effort is gathering material. We've been gathering material since 1993.

The emphasis here is on collecting material in unadorned form. That means text is preserved as a .txt file. Spreadsheets or tables are preserved in whatever forms they come to us. Most of Top Ten files are stored in comma delimited format because that is the way that Pieter Cath and Walt Reid have sent them to us. The ad hoc History/Archives Committee assumes that the comma delimited file last sent for any season or course is the "official" record. The R&T Committee does not at present fully accept this, but we're working on them. The announcement of All-Americans is in paper form in Swim Magazine. A copy of that paper format is the "official" list. In preparing for its use on the web, we will put it into digital form, but even that is stored in unadorned fasion. Unadorned means that it has as little commitment to any technology as possible. For example, we prefer a .txt file to a .doc file.

The effort last fall to agree on preferred formats was an attempt to undertake the preservation of our raw materials in a format that could be used by any technology. The effort was not successful. The only agreement was that "comma delimited" is our "de facto format". Comma delimited is not an appropriate format for storing archives because it is not a self-sufficient file. You can't use it unless you figure out what the fields are. And it is completely inappropriate for textual or image material. The people who were willing to help develop a means for preserving archives in a technologically neutral format fell aside.

Here is a list of the formats we are now using to store raw material in a digitally neutral way.

stores and other material that is primarily text are in .txt format.
"source art" photos are tifs. This includes all Swim Magazine photos.
many photos come to us as jpegs, so that's all we have.
all R&T information is comma delimited whereby the year & course are evident in the name.

Publishing archives

All material is published on the web in very simple html files. We have no java and very little cgi or Perl. All html files are "compiled" from the source materials, so if the entire web site were destroyed, it could be rebuilt overnite from the source files. Therefore we do not consider our html files to be official documents. They are instead "rendered" formats built from our "official" archives.

The archives are the property of USMS and it is expected that the form in which they are to be used will vary greatly. Furthermore, many different technology choices will be made in using them. This is why we wish to have the fewest possible technology limitations in the manner in which we store them.

Rendering archives for publication

At present USMS archives are being rendered into html files for use on the web using a website management system built by Carl House. Other website management systems are available. The most widely used is Cold Fusion. Many websites are managed simply thru the use of html editors like Front Page. Because we have so much material, virtually no funding, and a modest level of help from technically skilled volunteers, it is important that we build a system for maintaining the website that is as easy to maintain and expand as possible.

Here are the features of the system in use (Carl's system).

If you have interest in APL, here's how you can learn more about it.

The History of APL

The Bus/Truck Test

At present, the manner in which the webpages are rendered (created) is dependent on one person. That is and should be of concern to USMS. USMS can take comfort in the fact that the raw materials can easily be put in a format that is safe. While the effort to initiate storage in a preferred format last fall failed, the raw materials are on the CD's that were distributed before Christmas'99 and thus are in the hands of 8 or so USMS people. Unfortunately, only one person commented on the CD and his comment was that he couldn't figure out how to use it since it didn't autostart. It is also true that many of the .txt files are stored as components of APL files, but it will not be difficult to write them out as .txt files and we'll do it soon and produce another CD.