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\centerline{\bf The Aston \TeX\ Server}
\smallskip
\noindent 
For network users who can send mail but not  transfer files, accessing
remote archives is a problem.  The  conventional way to  do this is to
use `mail servers'  on the machines holding  the archives.   These are
programs which read mail messages directed  to  a specific username on
the archive machine, with  the message consisting  of commands  to the
mail  server.  The  server processes the   commands  which are usually
requests to send files to the requestor as mail messages.

The mail server described  here   accepts  several commands,
described in the  following  sections.  In each  case, the commands to
the server are specified in the body  of  the mail message.  This is a
little  different  from  many other mail  servers, which   require the
command to be in the `subject' field of the mail message.


\section{Where is the \TeX\ Archive Mail Server?}
The \TeX\  archive's mail server is accessed  by sending a mail request,
containing a valid {\tt mail-server} command, through \JANET\ to
\begintt				   
TEXSERVER@UK.AC.ASTON.TEX
\endtt
Note that {\tt texserver} operates without any  operator interaction:
your mail is never seen by human  eyes (unless  the  archive  maintainer
is deliberately doing so), so it is  essential that you get your requests
right. I\lowercase{NVALID REQUESTS ARE SIMPLY IGNORED}!

People occasionally experience difficulties with getting mail to, or
replies from, {\tt texserver}.  For this reason, {\tt texserver}
generates a `your message received' reply when it receives your
request.  The actual request is then queued for processing (which may
happen up to an hour later).




\section{Getting Help}
This help message can be acquired  by sending the following message to
{\tt texserver}:
\begintt
ignored-text
---ignored-text
return-address
HELP
ignored-text
\endtt
{\tt texserver} ignores everything in the body of the message until a line
containing  three hyphens as  its first non-blank   characters is met.
This  is because  many mail   messages  (particularly  those which  pass
through protocol converters at gateways) develop  a header showing its
path through the various mailers.

Following the three-hyphen  separator,  the return address  should  be
specified on the next non-blank line.  This must be the address {\it
from\/} {\tt texserver} {\it to\/} you, in   the  usual network  format
(for  people who don't know  this, it  is  explained in  a  later
section).   The  next non-blank line should  contain only the  word
{\tt HELP} (or {\tt HELP} with a language qualifier--see below),
specified   in lower, UPPER  or  MiXeD cases.  Any subsequent lines are
ignored.

This help message is also available  in a variety of  other languages.
The appropriate language  version  is specified   simply  by adding  a
`command  qualifier' to   the {\tt HELP}  command---so that,  for  
example, {\tt HELP/DANISH} or {\tt HELP/DANSK} will select the 
Danish-language version of the help text.  The following qualifiers are
currently supported: 
\begintt
/DANISH  |it or |tt /DANSK
/DUTCH   |it or |tt /NL or /NEDERLANDS
/FRENCH  |it or |tt /FRANCAIS
/GERMAN  |it or |tt /DEUTSCH
/ITALIAN |it or |tt /ITALIANO
/JAPANESE
/SPANISH |it or |tt /ESPAGNOL
/SWEDISH |it or |tt /SWEDE
\endtt
You can truncate the qualifier  to the  point of uniqueness,  so  that
{\tt HELP/FRE}  selects French and {\tt HELP/DE}  German.  But do so
carefully, for   {\tt texserver}  will simply    ignore ambiguous 
commands  such  as {\tt HELP/FR}.  And make sure you spell the qualifier
correctly!

If you request {\tt HELP} in a  language other than English, but
receive the  English  message instead,   it's   because there  is not 
yet   a translation  into the   requested  language.   Perhaps you
would  care  to consider making the translation  yourself, and mailing 
it back to the author.  Your contribution will, of course, receive
due acknowledgement.

It  is well worth  transferring the help  text to yourself  as a first
experiment of the system; this will ensure that  you understand how to
format messages  for {\tt texserver} and  to specify  network addresses on
VAX/VMS.


\section{Generating Directory Listings}
You can  acquire a directory  listing of  the   archive or a part of
the archive by sending the following message to {\tt texserver}:
\begintt
ignored-text
---ignored-text
return-address
DIRECTORY directory-specifier
ignored-text
\endtt
You will understand the form and purpose of most elements of the message
from  the  above discussion of  the help, so  they  won't be explained
again.  The {\tt DIRECTORY}  command,  which  can be specified in any
case and truncated to {\tt DIR},  should be given  a directory
specification as its argument, conforming to the VAX/VMS directory 
syntax (see below). If omitted, a listing of the directory
{\tt [TEX-ARCHIVE]} is returned.

Normally, the files listed by the {\tt DIRECTORY} command can be used as
the basis of a  {\tt FILES} command   (described in  a later section),  
which requests  files to  be  transferred.   VMS  wizards can, however, 
put qualifiers to  the DCL  {\tt DIRECTORY} command {\it following\/} 
the argument. The most useful one is  probably {\tt /SIZE}, which 
returns the file size in units of 512-byte blocks.

To make  full use of the  {\tt DIRECTORY} command, you  need to know
about VMS filenames.   Firstly, a filename   consists  of three  parts, 
the {\it name}  itself, the {\it extension} (file-type)  and the
{\it version number}, specified as
\begintt
name.extension;version
\endtt
Both  the name  and extension   may  be up  to   39  characters  each,
consisting of alphanumerics, dollar, underscore and hyphen.  Upper and
lower case letters are not distinguished.  Note, however,  that `name'
is not the same  as `name.', since   {\tt texserver} (and the  VMS mailer)
applies a default extension to the former but not to  the  latter.  If
the version   number  is   omitted   (in which  case    the semi-colon
punctuation is not required), VMS   automagically selects the  highest
(most recent).

Files, of  course, reside  in directories.   These  are   specified in
square   brackets.   Like  Unix  and  many  other operating   systems,
directories under VMS are hierarchical.  Sub-directories are specified,
within the square brackets, following  the parent  directory name  and
separated by periods.  Hence,
\begintt				   
[TEX-ARCHIVE.PUBLIC]
\endtt
is a valid directory name and
\begintt				   
[TEX-ARCHIVE.PUBLIC]PRIVATE.TXT;42
\endtt
a file within it.

Of  course,   directories  reside  on   discs  and discs   on nodes on
networks\dots but that is getting needlessly complicated.

The other thing you need to know  about is wildcards.  There are three
of them:
\halign{\quad \tt#&\qquad#\hfil\cr
    *   &matches zero or more characters\cr
    ?   &matches exactly one character\cr   
   ...  & matches a sub-directory tree\cr}

Hence, the {\tt texserver} command
\begintt
   DIRECTORY [TEX-ARCHIVE...]*.TXT
\endtt
will   find  all versions   of all  files   with an extension of 
{\tt .TXT} (conventional for text files) in the directory
{\tt[TEX-ARCHIVE]} or any of its sub-directories and  return  the  output
to  you (if  you  got the return address right).


\section{Locating Files}
If you know the name of a file which you want to retrieve, but not the
directory in which it resides, the  {\tt WHEREIS}  command  can be used
to find it.  For example, to locate all {\WEB} files in the  archive
(\WEB\ is the programming language in which \TeX\ is written, being  a
combination of \TeX\ input and Pascal), you would use a command like:
\begintt
ignored-text
---ignored-text
return-address
WHEREIS *.WEB
ignored-text
\endtt
You may use the same wildcard specifiers as in the DIRECTORY command.


\section{Searching Files}
You  can search through files in   the archive for  a  given string of
characters.  This is useful, for  example, when  you know something is
present in the archive, but not exactly which files are relevent.  The
{\tt SEARCH} request has the following format:
\begintt
ignored-text
---ignored-text
return-address
SEARCH directory-specifier search-string
ignored-text
\endtt
The directory specification  should have the  same format as  for  the
`directory' request.  The search string can be any arbitrary series of
characters, but if it includes one or more of the characters |'"/@#| the
whole string should be enclosed in double quotes (and double quotes in
the search string specified twice consecutively).  For example,
\begintt
search [TEX-ARCHIVE...]*.TXT text
\endtt
searches all  files  in the archive with  an extension of {\tt .TXT} for
the string   of   characters   `text'.    (Note   that    the    search
is case-insensitive.)  To search for the string |/"text"|,
one would use
\begintt
search [TEX-ARCHIVE...]*.TXT "/""text"""
\endtt
to `escape' the quote character, which has a special meaning to DCL.

\section{Transferring Files}
Now that you  can generate  listings  of  the contents of the archive,
extracting files from  it  is  child's play!  Simply edit  the listing
returned by the {\tt DIRECTORY} or  {\tt WHEREIS}  commands into the
following form:
\begintt
ignored-text
---ignored-text
return-address
FILES
filename
filename
.
.
.
\endtt
Any number of filenames may follow the {\tt FILES} command.  Each
filename must  be  specified  on a separate  line;  each file will
normally  be returned as a separate mail message.  Wildcards are
{\it not\/} supported by the {\tt FILES} command.


There  is a limit to the  size of  a {\sc mail{}}  message  which  can be sent
through  many gateways.  For  this reason, large files  resulting from
{\tt texserver} requests are  automatically split up and  send in a series
of parts.  You  will normally have  to concatenate these parts (in the
correct order!) before they will be of use.  

\section{Specifying the Return Address}
The syntax used for network addresses is the one  used throughout most
of the  networking  community,  |user@site|.  For example,   for \JANET\
users, requests from `orinoco' at site |uk.ac.wimbledon.common| should
have a return address of
\begintt
orinoco@uk.ac.wimbledon.common
\endtt
Note that the VMS mailer folds the return address to {\sc upper} case unless
it is enclosed in double quotes (this is a common source of trouble
for mail being returned to {\tt uucp} sites).

For |BITNET| users, you need to send the mail out via the |EARN| gateway:
\begintt				   
user%machine.site.BITNET@EARN-RELAY
\endtt
Note that the order  of specifying domains {\it is\/} important  to the
|EARN| mailer.  The syntax is similar  for other networks  accessed  via 
the |EARN|  gateway.

Requests from north America  (e.g., those with  |.EDU| addresses) should
also  use  the |EARN|  gateway,  since  the |NSFNET-RELAY| gateway    is not
available for UK-to-US traffic:
\begintt
user%machine.site.EDU@EARN-RELAY
\endtt
Other users  should try |EARN|  in the  first instance  (it seems to  be
pretty clever).  If that fails, consult  a local networking  guru.  If
that fails, mail the archive maintainers, who should be able to put you
in touch with someone who can help.  If all else fails, you're on your
own!

There  is  a document, compiled  by  Tim Clark   of the  University of
Warwick, which goes into significant  detail regarding the  routing of
mail  from the UK through gateways.   This is available in  \LaTeX\ form
from the archive as  file  
\begintt
[TEX-ARCHIVE.ARCHIVE-UTILS]GATEWAYS.TEX
\endtt

Any comments, queries, suspected bugs, etc should be addressed to the
author, not to the maintainers of the archive it serves.  (If any
query doesn't get answered within, say, a week, please re-submit it;
the author's network connection is rather flaky!)  Note that the
author is {\it not\/} a networking Wizard.

As usual with public-domain software, no commitment is given as to the
quality of this software: it may not do what this help says it does.


\section{Bibliography}
Terry A. Welch, 1984, A Technique for High-Performance Data
Compression,    
     IEEE Computer vol 17, no 6, pp.8--19.

\author{Adrian Clark}
\endinput