Bibliography Mail Server

Mail Server for AI Literature
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%                   LIDO-MAILSERVER for AI Literature                         %
%                (Options: nolatex   substring help english)                  %
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% Organization:     Prof. Dr. Alfred Kobsa                                    %
%                   Dept. of Information Science, Univ. of Konstanz, Germany  %
% No. of entries:   32,500                                                    %
% Send queries to:  lido@cs.uni-sb.de                                         %
% Send comments to: bib-1@cs.uni-sb.de                                        %
% ANMERKUNG:        Eine deutschsprachige Ausgabe erhalten Sie, wenn Sie im   %
%                   `Subject'-Feld statt 'English' `Deutsch' angeben.         %
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                 THE LIDO MAILSERVER FOR AI LITERATURE             Version 2.0

The LIDO MAILSERVER for AI literature at the University of Saarbruecken,
Germany, allows for the retrieval of bibliographic information on AI-related
publications via electronic mail. The references are returned in LaTeX (Bibtex)
format or in a refer-like format.  As of Jan. 1993, nearly 28.000 entriess are
contained in its database, with an annual increase of 20%.  About 4500
bibliographic requests from 40 countries are currently handled each year. Since
1991, the LIDO bibliographic mailserver has been included in the NSF Internet
Resource Guide.

The following people are involved in this project:

Coordination:  Alfred Kobsa
Wizards:       Peter Schwarz
               Gerd Herzog
               Clemens Huwig
Data Input:    Gisela Veit
               Stefan Weinen

The LIDO MAILSERVER is partly based on the UNIX refer system. Queries to the
bibliographic database are restricted to the last names of the author(s), the
title, and the year of publication. Users may select between full word search
(fast, since index-based; hence prioritized processing) and substring search
with optional regular expressions. Global search with key words is *not*
possible.  Users who already have a certain overview of a field will thus
probably profit more from the LIDO MAILSERVER than novices familiarizing
themselves with a new area.

In order to keep the network and computer workload tolerable and to control
erroneous queries, certain security limits have been introduced:
  1. Not more than 150 articles may be retrieved per query, and not more than
     500 per message (250 if bibtex format is required for the results).
  2. Queries with the option `nosubstring' are handled with priority.

Please understand that it is not possible for us to lend out or to copy 
articles which you retrieve in the bibliographic databases. If you find an
error, please send a note to bib-1@cs.uni-sb.de.

Messages to the LIDO MAILSERVER should be sent to

                  lido@cs.uni-sb.de

and should have the following format:

a) Subject field:

   - First the key word `lidosearch'.
   - Then the desired format of the bibliographic data in the return message:
     `latex' (= Bibtex format) or `nolatex' (= refer-like format). The default
     is `nolatex'.
   - Then the form of retrieval:
     a) `nosubstring': Your search patterns (see below) must be full words. 
        Your message will be handled with priority.
     b) `substring' (default): Your search patterns may be substrings. Regular
        expressions in the egrep notation (see Appendix) may be used as well.
        Plural forms and spelling variants can thereby be accounted for.
   - Then the language that should be used for comments and error messages in 
     the return message: `english' or `deutsch' (default).

b) Body of the Message:

   Each line of the body of the message contains one or more search patterns 
   which may refer to the last name of the authors, to words in the title, or 
   to the year of publication. If a line contains more than one search pattern,
   only those articles are retrieved which match *all* patterns. German umlauts
   and the `scharfes s' should be transliterated as follows: A", O", U", a", 
   o", u", s". No distinction is made between upper and lower case.

Example 1:
---------
mail lido@cs.uni-sb.de
Subject: lidosearch latex nosubstring english

wahlster
generation
kobsa model 1989

This message contains three different queries. In the first case, all articles
are retrieved which contain the word `wahlster' as an author's last name or as
a word in the title. In the second case, the same applies to `generation'. In 
the third case, all articles are retrieved which contain both `kobsa' and 
`model' and 1989 (but not `models', since `nosubstring' was selected). The
message will be handled with priority since `nosubstring' was chosen. The 
references in the return message will be in LaTeX (Bibtex) format, and error 
messages and comments will be in English.

Example 2:
---------
mail lido@cs.uni-sb.de
Subject: lidosearch latex substring english

kobs natu"rlichspr 

This message contains a single query only. All articles will be retrieved which
contain both the substring `kobs' (like in `Kobsa' or `Jakobson') and the
substring `natu"rlichspr'. The return message will come in LaTeX format,
and error messages and comments will be in English.

Example 3:
---------
mail lido@cs.uni-sb.de
Subject: lidosearch substring english

morpholog(y|ie)
modell?ing
modell*ing
model+ing
ja[ck]obson
\      matches the empty string at the end of a word.
  [_c_h_a_r_s] match any character in the given class; if the first character 
               after [ is ^, match any character not in the given class; 
               a range of characters may be specified by _f_i_r_s_t-_l_a_s_t; 
               for example, \W (below) is equivalent to the class [^A-Za-z0-9]
      ( )      parentheses are used to override operator precedence.
  \_d_i_g_i_t  \_n matches a repeat of the text matched earlier in the regexp
               by the subexpression inside the nth opening parenthesis.
       \       any special character may be preceded by abackslash to match it
               literally.

(the following are for compatibility with GNU Emacs)
      \b       matches the empty string at the edge of a word.
      \B       matches the empty string if not at the edge of a word.
      \w       matches word-constituent characters (letters & digits).
      \W       matches characters that are not word-constituent.

     Operator precedence is (highest to lowest) ?, *, and +, con-
     catenation, and finally |.  All other constructs are syntac-
     tically identical  to  normal  characters.   For  the  truly
     interested,  the  file  dfa.c describes (and implements) the
     exact grammar understood by the parser.