I need advice on getting the full archives for AUTOCAT searchable again.
About a year ago we established a web presence for the list.  In an
attempt to get the abysmally slow web archive searching to work a bit
faster Jim removed our '91-'96 archives from the location designated in
Notebooks= and created a separate file for each year.  One can still get
the weekly logs, and an index for each of the years to identify the logs,
but they cannot be searched via the LISTSERV search command.  I, and
others, want those old archives searchable.

Rather than rewriting it I include a note I sent to my coowner for
AUTOCAT, Judith Hopkins.  It's sort of a sublist thing but I am not sure
if it is the best approach: perhaps there is a simpler, more elegant
means.

Some of this may seem stupid or down right silly, I was guessing at some
things.  That's ok, as everyone knows I don't mind making a fool of
myself.  If you would, please, correct me where I'm wrong and/or propose a
better scheme.  If it makes any difference the list is on 1.8c at Buffalo,
running on Sunsparc unix, I think.

Douglas
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Ok.  First we get Jim to set up another list for us.  This should not
be a problem as there will be no distribution and the archives (other
than those currently building) will take no more space, just moved
somewhere else.  I'll try to be as brief and coherent as I can be at
present.

Jim sets up a new list for us, AUTOCATA ( a for archives) or AUTOCAT2
(I prefer the later).  This list is concealed, sub by owner, posting
by subscribers only, with notebooks,public.

Once established Jim transfers all the old AUTOCAT archives to the
AUTOCAT2 notebooks changing the name of the files to AUTOCAT2 LOGXXXXX.
Then he transfers the '97 logs and copies all the complete '98 logs
without deleting the '98 logs from the AUTOCAT notebook (duplication
but I see no way around it).  The sticky part will be the log currently
building.  Once all this is done the old archives should be searchable
with a slight modification of the search:
search (whatever) in autocat2

Now, we don't want Jim to be constantly transfering logs, we want them
to build themselves.  So subscribe A...2 to AUTOCAT, set it norenew,
nopost.  I think that will work, but this is the area I'm not sure
about, all this paragraph.  To go into the A...@ archives the stuff has
to be ditributed, right?  So need one sub, but I think it could be set
nomail and would still work.  Since only want AUTOCAT postings the
one sub should be AUTOCAT, set nomail. I *think* that would work, or
something like it, with some tweaking.The important thing is to avoid
setting up a loop between AUTOCAT and AUTOCAT2.

I've thought of how the header should read for the new list but don't give
it for brevity's sake.  I'm 99% certain the first part would work,
searchable archives.  As  to the more speculative part not sure.

I haven't said anything to Jimaabout it yet.   Let me know what you
think about it.  If you think any of it might work I
ll work  up a more detailed item for Jim.

Douglas