SUMMARY: public domain text database systems

[Nicholas Tarnoff]

The following are replies (and followup info. in some cases) to my search
for a public domain text database system that runs on Suns.

My investigations of the following are at various stages of completion and
I have not tried any of them. Bibliofile looks the most promising however
based on length of time in use, etc.

Please send me any additional info. you may have on pd databases.  Thank
you and good luck.

========================================

>From: (Marshall D. Abrams) <abrams%vlad at gateway.mitre.org>

We made a search and selected two products: For interactive work we are 
using Gnubib written by Zoltan Somogyi at the University of
Melborne <zs%munnari.oz at uunet.uu.net>.  This is public domain.
... We are beta testing Gnubib. ...contact Zoltan at the address I
gave you.

Sincerely,
- Marshall D. Abrams, phone: (703) 883-6938
   The MITRE Corporation, 7525 Colshire Drive
   Mail Stop Z506, Mc Lean, VA   22102
   best e-mail address: abrams%smiley at gateway.mitre.org

============================================================

>From: cck at cc-dnet.ucdavis.edu

For info on the "Bibliofile" system;

Earl H. Kinmonth
History Department
University of California, Davis
Davis, California  95616
916-752-1636 (2300-0800 PDT for FAX)
916-752-0776 (secretary)
----->ucbvax!ucdavis!ucdked!cck (email)
cc-dnet.ucdavis.edu [128.120.2.251]
	(request ucdked, login as guest)

=======================================================================

> From: rodgers at maxwell.mmwb.ucsf.EDU

You may want to investigate bib, which was intended as a replacement for
refer.  It is public domain (pd) and is available on the 4.3 BSD tape as
well as many ftp archive sites.  It is much less buggy than refer, but
still has problems.  If you are willing to depart from the pd realm, I
would recommend bibIX, which is distributed by the Berkeley Campus
Software Office (I am the principal author; ....(LONG-not included)

===========================================

Have you seen TOPIC from Verity?  Runs on Sun/UNIX, VMS, MS-DOS, etc., and
is pretty extensive.  Contact mcation at verity.com for more information (hi
mike!) ...

/jordan
#include <std/disclaimer.h>

==============================================================

>From: James C. Benz <jcbst3 at unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu>

A Jonathan Krueger suggested University INGRES which can be ftp'd from
postgres.berkeley.edu...  Don't know anything about it, only his
recommendation

============================================================

>From: montnaro at sprite.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro)

I don't know how simplistic you want to get, but there are a couple of
Emacs Lisp packages for GNU Emacs that allow you to manipulate BibTeX
format bibliographies in a crude fashion. One implements a bibtex mode,
another converts refer to bibtex format, and the third allows you to
perform simple keyword searches on a set of bibtex format files.

Skip Montanaro (montanaro at sprite.crd.ge.com)

============================================================

>From: wms at sunbar.mc.duke.edu

We have had good luck with a public domain system that was developed at
the University of Arizona Department of Computer Science.  Like refer, it
produces troff output, and it uses the same input format.  The most
difficult task for us was writing macros to conform to the formats of
medical journals, but it comes with macros for many technical journals.
There is a technical report from the University of Arizona, No. TR 82-1,
by Timothy A. Budd and Gary M. Levin, March, 1982, describing their
system.   Good luck.

================================================================

-Nicholas
--------------------------------------------------------------------
NAME:  Nicholas Tarnoff (Robot Systems Division)
USMAIL:National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly NBS)
       Bldg. 220 / Rm B127     Gaithersburg, MD 20899
TELE:	(301) 975-3464		ARPA:	tarnoff at cme.nist.gov
FAX:	(301) 975-4091		UUCP:	uunet!cme-durer!tarnoff
--------------------------------------------------------------------