20 Dec 89 JUDAIC STUDIES #28 22 Kislev 50 BS"D Connecting geographically & otherwise disparate groups with a common interest in the study of Judaica. Edited by Y. Greenbaum CONTENTS 1) New Judaica ListServ Facility 2) Almagest and the Jewish Calendar 3) ICON 1) New Judaica ListServ Facility Beginning with this newsletter, we will be distributing from Minnesota in addition to Tel-Aviv, due to the good offices of Tzvee Zahavy. We take this opportunity to review some useful functions of ListServ fileservers. (Necessary portions of commands appear in uppercase; for example, the first command could be written "rev judaica".) All commands are sent to LISTSERV AT TAUNIVM or LISTSERV AT UMINN1, rather than to JUDAICA AT TAUNIVM or JUDAICA AT UMINN1. REView JUDAICA - sends list of recipients The two lists are currently maintained as separate entities. Once they are "peered", i.e. connected, one review command will send both lists. The top of the list displays a group of parameters ("keywords") which describe the way the list operates. These, in turn, are described in the file LISTKEYW MEMO. To receive the list without this "header", the command becomes REView JUDAICA NOHeader. The server alphabetizes the recipients in order of node (machine at which mail is received). Nodes are usually acronyms of the institutions wherein they reside, and can be interpreted by consulting nodelists such as BITNET NODES. GET JUDAICA FILELIST - sends list of available files Files so far collected (soon to be posted to this list) describe projects in progress, list institutions which offer courses, evaluate software and so forth. We also hope to post back issues, and perhaps a few articles from other sources. Starting with this issue, all newsletters will be automatically recorded at UMINN1 in files labeled NOTEBOOK LOGyymm. All ideas of what might be useful to post are eagerly awaited. Any of these files can be retrieved using the GET command. The Listdb Commands - search and retrieve specific information All of the information posted at the listserv can be ordered automatically. But it can also be searched for precisely the information needed. The search commands are explained in a very long file called LISTDB MEMO. A much shorter tutorial file was reposted to a different listserv recently; I'll send it to whomever is interested. Although the tutorial omits a number of fine points (in fact, it doesn't deal at all with phonetic approximations), it is 200 odd lines, one tenth the size of the memo. And it substitutes English for IBMese. Below are templates extracted from the tutorial. Of course, in our case, we would replace PACS-L with JUDAICA, and Hypertext with whatever we are looking for. The following is the complete text of mail sent to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 (we would send to LISTSERV@UMINN1): // Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * Search Hypertext in PACS-L Index /* We get back two things. An e-mail message that tells us how the job went and the actual output file, called DATABASE OUTPUT. Here's the file: > Search Hypertext in PACS-L --> Database PACS-L, 11 hits. > Index Item # Date Time Recs Subject ------ ---- ---- ---- ------- 000022 89/06/30 08:31 306 Common Knowledge Info. 000047 89/07/07 08:15 18 Hypertext Conference 000075 89/07/12 17:13 21 Hypertext & Hypermedia Articles 000088 89/07/13 16:19 17 CD-ROM Expo '89 000194 89/07/22 14:11 25 Hyperdoc 000248 89/07/30 20:00 23 Hypertext Hands-On! 000251 89/07/31 12:52 14 Re: Hypertext Hands-On! 000253 89/07/31 15:04 47 Was: Hypertext Hands-On! 000267 89/08/03 09:38 24 A New Journal -- Hypermedia 000311 89/08/11 12:18 23 Hypermedia & Optical Tech. Resources 000338 89/08/17 11:37 33 Hypermedia/Multimedia ("Recs", in case you're wondering, is short for "records", that is, lines. I point this out since electronic mail gives priority to shorter items. Large files can take hours or even days to arrive. If time is short, send separate Print orders for each file.) We decide we want to see number 267 (the messages are numbered at the left). So we send a second job to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 with the following lines in it: // Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * Search Hypertext in PACS-L Print all of 267 /* (Note that the search command must be repeated.) To print multiple messages, just add the additional numbers: Print all of 267 311 Here's a brief summary of some more advanced search features: AND - Its implicit, so Search hypertext hypermedia in PACS-L = Search hypertext AND hypermedia in PACS-L. OR - It's explicit: Search hypertext OR hypermedia in in PACS-L. NOT - It's also explicit: Search hypertext NOT hypermedia in PACS-L. Terms can be nested: Search (hypertext OR hypermedia) AND multimedia in PACS-L. Below are two ways of limiting the scope of the search by date. // Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * Search Hypertext in PACS-L from 89/9/1 to 89/9/30 Index /* // Database Search DD=Rules //Rules DD * Search Hypertext in PACS-L since 10/89 Index /* Here is some more exact information taken from the LISTDB MEMO: Ways of expressing date and time: (Dates and times are inclusive - e.g. UNTIL today 6 searches thru 6:59:59.) SINCE date-spec FROM date-spec1 TO date-spec2 UNTIL date-spec TODAY yy dd mm
<->monthname<-> mm/yy mm-yy yy/mm/dd yy-mm-dd Month names can be abbreviated to any length. If there is an ambi- guity, the first month in chronological order is retained. For example, "J" would mean "January", "JU" would be "June" and "JUL" would unambiguously select "July". The format of a "time-spec" is simply >. +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Search problem (serious or severe) in BBOARD since july | | Search problem in BBOARD since oct 85 | | Search symptom in BBOARD since 12/28 | | Search error report from 12 january to august in BBOARD | | Search user complaint until 18 sept in BBOARD | | Search data check since today 11:53 in EREP | | | | Figure 5. Sample SEARCH commands using date search arguments | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FROM 14 july TO oct 87 | | SINCE 86 | | UNTIL 23-JUN-87 | | SINCE today 11:30 | | | | Figure 12. Sample date clauses | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ Note that, in all templates, lines 1,2,3 and 6 remain constant. Line 5 requests an index listing in which files the term is found or a "print"... i.e. the files themselves. The commands Search, Index and Print can be abbreviated S, I, and P respectively. If the item sought is a phrase containing blanks, enclose it in 'single quotes'. ("Double quotes" will cause the search to respect cAsE.) Phrases containing the following words or characters must be within quotes: FROM, IN, SINCE, TO, UNTIL, WHERE, WITH ( ) < > = | & ^ / Phonetic searches are performed through the use of the SOUNDS LIKE and DOES NOT SOUND LIKE operators, which are syntactically similar to CONTAINS and DOES NOT CONTAIN. That is, you could do something like: Select * in PHONEBOOK where NAME sounds like WOLF 2) Almagest and the Jewish Calendar From:Daniel Schindler Date:Wed,22 Nov 89 11:18:03 +0200 Rabbi Menachem Kasher in his Torah Shelemah, vol. 13 quotes the Almagest (Book 6, chapter 2) of Ptolemy saying that the length of the average lunar month is 29 days 31' 50'' 8''' 20''''. This is exactly the value the Jewish calendar uses, 29d 12 hr 793 parts where there are 1080 parts in an hour. The commentary printed on the side of the Rambam (Kiddush HaChodesh 6:3) by Ovadiah b. David quotes the Almagest as having a value of the average lunar month of 29 days 31' 50'' which is exactly 1 part less than the Jewish calendar value and is in fact equal to the Islamic calendar value. The Almagest was originally written in Greek about 1700 years ago and translated into Arabic about 700 years later and then into Hebrew about 200 years after that. Are there any libraries with copies of the Almagest in any language, and what value do they have for the average lunar month? By the way, this method of expressing the average lunar month gives a very natural way of obtaining 1080 parts / hour. 3) ICON From:Alan D CorreDate:Thu,23Nov89 15:43:32 -0600 In response to an enquiry, I am pleased to give some information which may be of interest to readers of this newsletter. I have published a book entitled ICON PROGRAMMING FOR HUMANISTS. This is in the 1990 list of Prentice Hall of Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 and may be obtained from any bookseller. It does not have a specifically Hebraic bent (altho it begins with a quote from the Gemara) but many of its applications will be of interest to readers. An appendix offers a method of creating foreign language character sets under MS-DOS. Icon is a wonderful vehicle for the manipulation of natural language, emphasizing proper programming principles while striking a reasonable balance between structure and freedom. Most versions of Icon are public domain, since it was developed under government grant, and it is available for many computers. A version recently appeared for the Apple Macintosh computer, but for this one you will have to pay. (A review of this implementation by me will appear soon in C_Hum). If you want to learn some programming, Icon is quite a good language to learn first, especially for individuals who are mainly interested in text analysis of one kind or another. I have also published a CHRESTOMATHY AND DISKIONARY OF MODERN LITERARY JUDEO-ARABIC. Without claiming to be complete in any way, it is an attempt to use modern technology to open up this neglected field in Jewish studies. It functions on most IBM compatibles. This is available from LRC Software, Language Resource Center, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, PO Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA. The cost is $79.95 + $3.50 postage and handling, US funds. Wisconsin residents add 5% tax. Alan D. Corre Department of Hebrew Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (414) 229-4245 PO Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201 corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu