From e0c6872cf40896c7be36b11dcc744620f10adf1d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2019 13:46:59 +0900
Subject: Initial commit

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+
+% Things to take account of present location
+% (can all be deleted in favour of the correct bundle of packages, and
+% whatever, for journal)
+%
+\renewcommand\textfraction{0.25}
+%
+\InputIfFileExists{fontuse.cfg}{\typeout{Using config file
+  fontuse.cfg}}{}
+%
+% Things this paper definitely needs
+%\usepackage{xspace}
+\newcommand\ftpcmd{\textsf{ftp}\xspace}
+\DeclareRobustCommand\cs[1]{\texttt{\char`\\#1}}
+%
+\hyphenation{gobble-de-gook}
+%
+\title{\CTAN{} past and present\Dash what next?}
+\author{Robin Fairbairns}
+%\netaddress{rf@cl.cam.ac.uk}
+\begin{Article}
+
+  \section{Introduction}
+  The Comprehensive \TeX{} Archive Network (\CTAN{}) is a set of
+  `loosely consistent' archives of \TeX{} material which (together
+  with a large set of sites that mirror them) provide a single
+  (logical) point for people to acquire material for their
+  \TeX-related work.  I've been a user of \CTAN{} since its inception
+  at Aston, but since the move of the Aston node to Cambridge I've
+  been involved in its management; this article derives from a talk I
+  gave at the \UKTUG{} meeting on `\TeX{} and the Internet'.
+
+%  As a result, when we were
+%  discussing who should talk on the topic at the \UKTUG{} `\TeX{} and
+%  the Internet' meeting, for some reason everyone assumed I would
+%  take the responsibility\dots
+
+  As far as \acro{UK} people are concerned, \TeX{} archiving begins
+  with the archive that Peter Abbott established at Aston back in the
+  eighties.  Aston was available to people who could talk
+  coloured-book protocols over Janet.\footnote{Those protocols were
+    available to people such as myself over the public X.25 network; I
+    worked at the time in a small firm, and had European money to
+    connect to the network.}
+
+  A while after the archive was established, the UK\TeX{} mailing list
+  was started, initially as a means of propagating information about
+  the content of the archive.  Volume `87' number 1 of UK\TeX{} talked
+  about accessions to the archive in the week ending 4 September 1987.
+
+  Peter's initiative was, at heart, a practical one: connection to the
+  wider Internet was a major undertaking for most people in the
+  \acro{UK}, so it made sense to collect things available `on the
+  Internet' into one place for access over Janet.  Peter wrote a paper
+  about his experiences \cite{Abbott:TB10-1-59}, which he gave at
+  \acro{TUG}'89 at Stanford University.  I was struck, in re-reading Peter's
+  paper, by the manpower he had to run the archive; the list of eight
+  people reads like one of the great and the good of \TeX{} in the
+  \acro{UK}.\footnote{Those on that list remark wryly about numbers of
+    cooks and quality of broth\dots}
+
+  Peter found at Stanford that the Americans were wildly jealous of
+  his achievement; at the time, whoever felt like it would establish a
+  directory or two on his or her site's \ftpcmd server to promulgate
+  their own favourite stuff.  This was all very much in the spirit of
+  the ``anarchistic Internet'', but it made for a terrible to-do to
+  find any given \TeX-related item you might be looking for.
+
+%  (Somewhere around that time, Don Hosek established the \texttt{ymir}
+%  archive; I don't know if it was causally related to Peter's paper,
+%  but it did start to offer some degree of comprehensiveness, at least
+%  in macros offered.)
+
+  Whatever was its real driving force, it was after the  Stanford
+  meeting that \CTAN{} appeared.  George Greenwade chaired a Technical
+  Working Group on archive structures, and undertook to establish the
+  first truly comprehensive \acro{USA}n \TeX{} archive at Sam Houston
+  State University (\acro{SHSU}) in Huntsville, Texas; he reported on
+  the matter in \cite{Greenwade:TB14-3-342}.  A German node was
+  established at Stuttgart, and with the advent of the \acro{JIPS}
+  service, \acro{UK} academics started to have access to the Internet,
+  and the Aston archive became a \CTAN{} node too.
+
+  The tale of Aston ended in 1994, when Peter Abbott was about to take
+  early retirement from Aston University.  Since we could no longer
+  guarantee that the archive would have a protecting friend, the
+  \UKTUG{} committee\footnote{As private individuals: we don't
+    consider the archive a service offered by \UKTUG, though we claim
+    to `support' it.} sought alternative sites for it.  Some obvious
+  candidates for the archive site were examined and rejected.  The
+  \acro{HENSA} archive would want to split the holdings between `Unix'
+  and `\acro{PC}' sets, which do not match the structure of \CTAN's stuff
+  (\TeX{} is after all a portable program, \emph{par excellence}).
+  The national typesetting archive at Oxford couldn't offer \acro{CPU}
+  power and disc space in the required time frame.  In either case,
+  management of the archive by remote `experts' could have been
+  problematic.  Finally, Prof.~Roger Needham kindly agreed to a
+  proposal prepared by Sebastian Rahtz and presented to him by Martyn
+  Johnson, that Cambridge should host the archive.  We completed the
+  change-over \emph{just} before Peter retired!
+
+  \section{Archive mechanisms}
+
+  I said at the start that \CTAN{} is a weakly-consistent set of
+  archives.  What I mean is, that they are allowed to differ in the
+  short term, but (in principle) they will sooner or later get
+  themselves back into synchronisation.  Weak consistency is a common
+  thing to find: another \TeX-related weakly consistent set is the
+  \textsf{Refdbms} archives, which maintain a set of bibliographic
+  references which can be updated anywhere with the knowledge that
+  sooner or later every instance will become a pukkah copy\Dash see,
+  for example \cite{Golding:1994}.
+
+  \CTAN{} maintains its consistency by the `archive user' sending
+  email messages to the archive users at other archives when something
+  new is installed, or something is replaced, moved or
+  deleted.\footnote{While this isn't as eccentric a proceeding as it
+    would have been in the days when I first used email, one must
+    admit it lacks a certain~\dots\ fundamental sense.  I am reminded
+    of the Dilbert cartoon\Dash which I failed to save from the
+    Web\Dash where the idiot manager suggests maintaining a database
+    by email, and Dilbert and Co.~fall about at his stupidity.} The
+  receiving archive user checks that the message is from a `known'
+  source, parses it, and translates it into a one-shot mirror
+  operation.  The \textsf{Perl} scripts to do all of this are
+  maintained by Rainer Sch\"opf.
+
+  That procedure deals with the `installations': when someone has
+  submitted something to the \verb|/incoming| directory of one of the
+  archives, or when one of us has something to install (for example,
+  all the updates to \LaTeXe{} itself are installed by Rainer in this
+  way).
+
+  There are still archives of the `old' sort: places where people
+  make their own bits and pieces available for general access, but
+  which don't offer a comprehensive collection.  An example is Knuth's
+  (and Tom Rokicki's, among others) stuff, kept on
+  \url{labrea.stanford.edu}; there are many others, and there are
+  many things that are kept in an archive related to another
+  matter\Dash for example, the N\TeX{} implementation for Linux, lives
+  on the general Linux archive at \url{sunsite.unc.edu}
+
+  For all these things, each of the \CTAN{} nodes runs a considerable
+  mirroring operation every night.  Managing that mirror operation,
+  and dealing with the installations and miscellaneous queries, takes
+  a considerable portion of a person's time.  For the three \CTAN{}
+  nodes at \url|ftp.tex.ac.uk|, \url|ftp.shsu.edu| and
+  \url|ftp.dante.de|, there are three people to deal with all the
+  work (the nominal manager of \url|ftp.shsu.edu|, George Greenwade,
+  has taken no part in the work for more than a year).  If the eight
+  people running Aston at the start were spoiling a broth, I think
+  it's reasonable to claim that three people for three archives are
+  perhaps a little thinly spread (despite excellent systems support
+  from Martyn Johnson at Cambridge, and a number of back-up workers
+  helping Rainer at \url|ftp.dante.de|).
+
+  \section{The archives from the users' viewpoint}
+
+  I persist in viewing the archives primarily as sources of stuff to
+  get by \ftpcmd, but the evidence suggests that they are as
+  often as not accessed via \textsf{Web} browsers.
+
+  As anonymous \ftpcmd archives, \CTAN{} nodes offer exactly the
+  same structure.  A rather deep tree of directories is accessed via
+  the root \url|/tex-archive/|, and the structure of that tree is the
+  same at all nodes.  If a location on \CTAN{} is quoted, such as
+  \url|macros/eplain|, the common root is assumed.
+
+  \CTAN{} stores very large numbers of individual files (for example,
+  macro packages), which is good for those who want to browse, but bad
+  for retrieving the files.  Therefore, \CTAN{} provides means to
+  compress entire directories (or even directory trees) on-the-fly.
+  Suppose, for example, I want to acquire the latest version of
+  \LaTeX{} for my \acro{DOS} machine; I will (within \ftpcmd)
+  change directory to \url|tex-archive/macros/latex|, and then
+  \verb|get base.zip|.  There's no file called \url|base.zip|, but there is a
+  directory \url|base|: \CTAN{} will make a \textsf{zip} archive of
+  the directory `on the fly', and return that.  The archive can also make
+  \url|.tar.gz| and \url|.tar.Z| archives, but nothing specifically
+  targeted at Mac users.  It's worth noting that the most frequent
+  cause of connections to \CTAN{} failing is a user's optimism about how
+  much he can pull in one go; a common one is to try and pull all of
+  the \verb|latex| tree, which gives you all the \verb|packages| and
+  (huge) \verb|contrib| sub-trees, as well as \verb|doc| and
+  \verb|unpacked| directories (which in a \verb|.zip| archive simply
+  repeat some or all of the \verb|base| directory).
+
+  As the material on \CTAN{} gradually approaches 2~Gbytes, how is the
+  poor user to find her way around?  Ideally, one would like some kind
+  of advanced indexing software, but even within the rather restricted
+  compass of an \ftpcmd connection \CTAN{} can help.  Each night,
+  the archive examines its own navel: it produces sorted lists of all
+  its files, and stores them in the archive itself; very often, one
+  can gain an adequate clue to the location of a file by use of the
+  command \texttt{quote site index} at the \ftpcmd prompt.\footnote{Note
+    that some \ftpcmd clients do not require the \texttt{quote}; check
+    with the documentation.}  While a tool of more expressive power
+  would be nice, the clever use of the arcane `regular expressions'
+  employed can find things with some precision (see question~23 in
+  \BV~5.6).
+
+  Other means of accessing the files are:
+  \begin{itemize}
+  \item via \acro{NFS} (fine for people with lots of bandwidth to the
+    archive machine, such as sites on the SuperJanet backbone, but not
+    otherwise terribly practical)
+  \item via \textsf{gopher}; this is an entirely automatic
+    mechanism\Dash we've devoted little effort to it in Cambridge, and
+    the evidence is that it's little used
+  \item via mail: both \texttt{dante} and \texttt{shsu} offer an
+    \textsf{ftpmail} interface; mail a message containing just
+    `\texttt{help}' to \texttt{ftpmail@dante.de} (or at \texttt{shsu})
+    for details.
+  \end{itemize}
+
+  And there's the Web\dots
+
+  \begin{figure*}[tp]
+    \leavevmode
+    \centerline{\includegraphics[scale=0.75]{texpkgs-bit.eps}}
+    \caption{The start of Graham Williams' Web page}
+    \label{fig:williams-web}
+  \end{figure*}
+
+  \section{Access by \acro{WWW} interfaces}
+
+  The really big expansion of the media hype about the Internet has
+  coincided with the explosion of the Web into people's consciousness.
+  The Web is indeed a fine mechanism, particularly for those with lots
+  of bandwidth, a big screen, and strong wrists and fingers, but it's
+  nothing without information providers.  Sadly, providing information
+  in a useful and attractive form proves actually to be rather tricky;
+  the manpower required to do it is not easily available to those of
+  us running \CTAN, so we tend to rely on people outside our numbers.
+
+  Norm Walsh \cite{Walsh:TB15-3-339} developed a mechanism that
+  permits access to the `normal' searching facilities of \acro{CTAN}.
+  People (particularly in the USA) speak well of it, but I've never
+  had success with it (there's \emph{never} enough bandwidth across
+  the Atlantic).  The \acro{URL} is \url{http://jasper.ora.com/ctan.html},
+  and it has a series of menus for accessing the archive, as well as
+  some searching mechanisms.  The information content is derived
+  automatically from directory listings of \acro{SHSU}, so that
+  (beyond the considerable effort of setting the thing up) there's
+  little day-to-day work involved.
+
+  % *NOTE* The one instance of `---' instead of \Dash in this
+  % paragraph comes from visual editing ... if the para gets
+  % reformatted, it may need changing back to \Dash
+  Another interesting mechanism is the \AllTeX{} Navigator, which
+  appears in three languages (French, English\Dash
+  \url{http://www.loria.fr/tex/english/index.html} --- and German; the
+  German portion is said not to be up to date).  The range of
+  information stored is enormous (it must represent a massive
+  investment of effort); it's well worth a visit just to browse.  One
+  of its services is a \acro{CGI}-script that searches the archives;
+  this is a better interface than is \texttt{quote site index}, in
+  that one can scroll or search through the information returned, but
+  it's still not terribly informative.
+
+  More promising is Graham Williams'
+  \url{ftp://cbr.dit.csiro.au/staff/gjw/www/texpkgs.html}; he is undertaking to
+  index all the macro packages on \CTAN{} to a fairly impressive level
+  of detail (somewhat like David Jones' pre-\CTAN{} index which is
+  now, sadly, no longer maintained).  I've included a short extract in
+  figure~\ref{fig:williams-web}, which gives some indication; that
+  figure (though it contains some exciting flags at its top) is
+  missing the flag-links to the \CTAN{} sites themselves; by default,
+  the package location points to \path{ftp.cdrom.com}
+
+  \section{And for those with no network?}
+
+  The Internet's a grand place \dots~for those of us who are connected
+  to it.  Even when I'm at home, dialling in to a \CTAN{} site, I find
+  the archive tricky (and I know the layout better than most).  How
+  are the `unconnected' to survive?
+
+  The obvious solution is to dump the archive's contents to
+  \acro{CD-ROM}.  This is plainly do-able (though the whole archive
+  now takes more even than two \acro{CD}s).  The problem is
+  navigation: with the crazy restrictions of \acro{ISO}~9660 \acro{CD}
+  directory format, file names lose what one might call `expressive
+  power'.
+
+  The problem is addressed by the `targeted' \acro{CD}\Dash one which
+  you can use as an installation source from the word go.  The first
+  of these was the \acro{NTG}'s excellent 4All\TeX{} \acro{CD} for
+  \acro{PC}s, which combines a view of how the system ought to be run
+  with a well-constructed, extensive set of backup archive material.
+  A new one, whose structure is based on the \acro{TDS} `standard' and
+  which uses the te\TeX{} implementation of \TeX{}, is being prepared
+  for release in May 1996.
+
+  \section{The future}
+
+  \CTAN{}, or something like it, will remain necessary for some time
+  to come, but none of those involved would claim that it's entirely
+  satisfactory as it stands.  In particular, a `world-wide' network of
+  archives should consist of more than two European sites and one
+  barely-functioning \acro{USA}n one.  Where are we on the Pacific
+  rim?; why have we only in the last year gained our first mirror in Africa?
+
+  A straightforward first step would be to make Norm Walsh's mechanism
+  available more widely; for wide usage, it should be available at all
+  CTAN sites and at a representative selection of mirrors.
+
+  However, indexing and searching mechanisms have advanced massively
+  over the last few years, and it would be nice to unleash the power
+  of (say) Digital's AltaVista engine on the contents of \CTAN{}.
+  To do this, we need some criterion for indexing; even a
+  well-documented \TeX{} file can be expected largely to consist of
+  gobbledygook, and finding the relevant stuff (in
+  \textsf{doc}-package material, in running comments, or after
+  \cs{endinput}) needs some careful heuristic work.
+
+  There is a comparable set of archives, called the \acro{CPAN}, which
+  holds \textsf{Perl}-related material (they do say that imitation is
+  the sincerest form of flattery!).  The \acro{CPAN} people have
+  constructed a script that will decide for you where you
+  \emph{should} have connected your Web-browser, and sends your
+  connection off there.  If you have access to a Web-browser, try
+  connecting to \url|http://www.perl.com/CPAN/|\Dash if I do it, I end
+  up at a directory at
+  \url|ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/perl-CPAN//|, which is
+  physically in a different continent.  This is a neat trick, and
+  we're working on something similar for \CTAN{}.  The script depends
+  on your domain address, so that if you are one of those
+  tricksy sites that is (say) in \verb|.com| even though you're
+  physically located in the \acro{UK} and connected through \acro{UK}
+  service providers, you'll end up at the wrong place.
+
+  I mentioned above that there are better protocols to run what
+  \CTAN{} does.  I (continue to) feel it would be nice to use some
+  protocol other than \textsf{email} to maintain our consistency, but
+  providing a complete suite of protocols (and getting it accepted!)
+  is beyond the resources I have (notably the time resources\dots).
+
+  To close, at the meeting at Warwick, I asked for suggestions.  I've
+  presented all the ideas that came from the meeting; do readers have any?
+
+%  \subsubsection*{Where does this fit?}
+%  The first-level subdirectories of the tree are:
+%  \begin{tabular}{ll}
+%    biblio   & bibliography manipulation \\
+%    digests  & \TeX{}-related publications \\
+%    dviware  & \acro{DVI} processors, etc. \\
+%    fonts    & fonts and related stuff \\
+%    graphics & graphics in \TeX{} \\
+%    help     & \acro{FAQ}s and the like \\
+%    indexing & support for index creation \\
+%    info     & `other' information \\
+%    language & non-American language support, \\
+%             & and hyphenation patterns \\
+%    macros   & of all sorts \\
+%    support  & programs for making life with \TeX{} easier \\
+%    systems  & implementations of \TeX{}, \\
+%             & including a subdirectory \texttt{knuth}\dots \\
+%    tds      & the output of the \TeX{} directory structure \\
+%             & Technical Working Group \\
+%    tools    & of use to archive maintainers \\
+%    usergrps & a place for \TeX{} groups to `advertise' \\
+%    web      & literate programming tools
+%  \end{tabular}
+
+\begin{thebibliography}{1}
+
+\bibitem{Abbott:TB10-1-59}
+Peter Abbott.
+\newblock {{{UK\TeX} and the Aston archive}}.
+\newblock {\em TUGboat}, 10(1):59--60, April 1989.
+
+\bibitem{Golding:1994}
+Richard~A. Golding, Darrell D.~E. Long, and John Wilkes.
+\newblock The {\emph{refdbms}} distributed bibliographic database system.
+\newblock In {\em Proceedings of the Winter Usenix Conference}, San Francisco,
+  CA, January 1994.
+
+\bibitem{Greenwade:TB14-3-342}
+George~D. Greenwade.
+\newblock {{The Comprehensive {\TeX} Archive Network ({\CTAN})}}.
+\newblock {\em TUGboat}, 14(3):342--351, October 1993.
+
+\bibitem{Walsh:TB15-3-339}
+Norm Walsh.
+\newblock {{A World Wide Web interface to {\CTAN}}}.
+\newblock {\em TUGboat}, 15(3):339--343, September 1994.
+
+\end{thebibliography}
+\end{Article}
-- 
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