Alternate Views of the Jargon File
Lots of people have used the Jargon File as a test case for different
kinds of search and retrieval engines. Here are all the different
ways of viewing it that I have URLs for as of January 21 1996:
Current Versions (3.0.0 or later)
Most of the recent conversions have search capability but only crude ASCII
highlighting (they were generated from the info or ASCII
versions).
- Hans DeWolf's WWW Jargon File
- This appears to be the best of the `rogue' conversions, except for the
lack of search capability. Crossreference-to-URL translation was apparently
done with a filter, and the results extensively hand-hacked (even including
indexes to lists of entries deleted in various versions!)
- The CNAM View
- Searchable HTML, made from the info version, put together by two people
at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. Accepts Perl
regular expressions. Version 3.2.0.
- Arjan De Mes's View
- Arjan De Mes <mes@fwi.uva.nl> did this version at the University of
Amsterdam. It allows search on a conjunction of up to three keywords. Version
3.3.1.
- University of Marburg conversion
- Nice conversion of 3.0.0 on a German-language site (it's still English).
I wasn't able to discover who did this one, but they've got a conversion
script called jar2html that seems to do a pretty good job of generating
HTML from the flat-text version.
- UMEC's Jargon Server
- The form allows you to search, or get a random entry.
- http://leb.net/~tonyk/jargon/
- HTML generated from the flat-text version. Pretty generic.
- The Jargon Dictionary
- One of the better alternate HTMLizations.
- http://watson-net.com/jargon/
This version has good support for searching and picking a random term.
Old Versions
These versions are out of date.
- The Hyper-G Gateway
- The lexicon part of the File (without the front matter or appendices)
as captured by a search-and-indexing engine called "Hyper-G" at a university
in Austria. I don't know for sure what version they captured, but it dates
back to 1992 so it's probably 2.9.10.
-
- The Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing
borrowed a lot of Jargon File
material, I'm not sure from which version.
Foreign Language Translations
- Il Gergo Telematico
- Maurizio Codogno has done an Italian documnt he describes as a
"derivative work" or "spinoff" of the 3.0.0 Jargon File.
I know there are WAIS and other databases built from the Jargon File, but don't
have those URLs. If you know of an interesting one, send me mail.
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>