Local Listing Documentation

Introduction

This is an indexing service provided to MV users. It lets you supply some information about yourself and your documents to aid others in finding the material you've put in your home page.

To use this service, you must create a file containing the information that you want included in the index. As with other data on your web page, we suggest that you maintain a copy of this file offline, and upload to your web page whenever you update it. When you first create this file, and then again whenever you change it, you must tell the MV indexing system to look at your file and notice the changes. Similarly, if you want to remove your information from the index, you can remove the file (or empty) it, and when you tell the server to update the index with your new data it will remove your old information.

This system will only accept information from MV users, and it will only allow you to reference web pages that are contained within (or at a lower level than) the directory containing your data file -- that is, from your home page area. Although your file can be at any directory level in your web area, you should probably place it at the main level.

When your file is ready, submit it to the noticer function in the listings page. Note: because of the way most browsers try to remember previously-seen pages, if you submit your file to the noticer and then try to resubmit it, your browser may not think that it has to contact the server the second (and subsequent) times. If this happens, use the reload function of your browser while you're at the page that is returned after you submit your data. Note also that the indexes themselves may change frequently and you may need to reload them to see the recent changes.

The data file

Each user (or group of collaborating users, or family, or whatever) maintains a single data file called listing.mv near the top of your data space. Since this file lives in the web server's data area, it is accessible to this system via the web. For example, if you are J. Random User you might maintain your family's data file as:

	http://www.cnh.mv.com/ipusers/jruser/listing.mv

In your file, you might refer to the "jrandom/" and "spublic/" subdirectories for you and your spouse, yeilding these urls:

	http://www.cnh.mv.com/ipusers/jruser/jrandom/
	http://www.cnh.mv.com/ipusers/jruser/spublic/

The format of the data file is simple, but not completely obvious. For each entry in the master directory, you would have a section in the listing.mv file. Each section begins with a line that defines what type of entry you are defining:

	[user]
	blah blah blah . . .

	[user]
	blah blah blah . . .

	[document]
	blah blah blah . . .

In the above example, two user entries and one document entry were provided. Within each section, you can list the information for that entry, such as the name of the user or their e-mail address. An example showing all the possible entries follows.

	[user]
	name = User, J. Random
	email = jrandom@mv.mv.com
	url = jrandom/
	interest = History
	interest = Games;Chess

	[document]
	name = Declaration of Independence
	url = docs/doi.html
	email = jruser@imaginary.gov
	category = Government;Ideals
	category = History;American

Each listing.mv file may have as many or as few user and/or document sections as desired. An empty file is valid.

The user section

Each [user] section defines one entry in the user directory. Each entry must have a name, which is displayed in the directory. Please list names as "Lastname, Firstname MI" so that they'll get alphabetized correctly. For people used to alternate naming conventions, "Lastname" is the family name, "Firstname" is your personal given name, and "MI" is any middle initial or middle name you might have.

In addition to the name, you may specify an url and an email address that correspond to the user. The url must be a relative url, and must be in or under the directory where the listing.mv file was found. Note that the url may be / or ./ or . or even empty to indicate that the current directory is the url you are referring to. The email address should be your personal email address. If an url is given, that is where people will go if they click on your name in the directory. If an email address is given, it is listed beside your name.

For each user, you may optionally list one or more interest entries. These will be included in the index of interests on the web server. There are two types of entries. You may list one topic with no semicolon. You may list a topic and a subtopic, separated by a semicolon. Please look through the existing interest directory to see what people are choosing for their topic names, to keep the topics manageable, clear, and consistent. Only one interest per line, please.

The document section

The [document] sections allow you to have a listing for any documents you are authoring or storing in your data area. The entries are similar to the [user] section, with a few exceptions. The email entry is the address of the author. Instead of interests, documents can be placed in categories, although the syntax and usage remains the same.

If the email address of the document's author happens to match one of the users previously defined in the file, then the author's name will appear next to the document name.