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Re: Locate algorithm manuscript



On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 02:32:19PM -0400, Jim Spath wrote:
 > The classic man page for "locate" includes this reference:
 >      Woods, James A., "Finding Files Fast", ;login, 8:1, pp. 8-10, 1983.
 > 
 > This 3 page paper (or 3 page portion of a larger publication) can be
 > found in a scanned PDF format on the University of California at
 > Berkeley web site:
 > https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1983/CSD-83-148.pdf
 > 
 > I thought it would be a good historic document to include in the
 > NetBSD sources along with 3 classic algorithm/code documents under
 > /usr/share/doc/papers (see below).

On the one hand, quite possibly; on the other hand, distributing
papers and other historical artifacts isn't really NetBSD's
mission. The only reason we have the existing papers is that they're
traditional (meaning, they've been shipped with BSD since ~forever),
but they were originally included as a substitute for documentation.

(The difference between a paper and a manual is that a paper is a
fixed artefact and doesn't change over time, and ideally also doesn't
exist in multiple versions so that know the text someone cited is the
same text you're reading. Papers are fixed in time. Whereas a manual
or other documentation describes the operation of a system and should
be updated as the system changes.)

So I'm inclined to think it's not a good idea.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost


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