"Chris B" <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote in message 
news:4abcaa2b$1@news.povray.org...
> As per Mike's note; Geocities is closing all its free websites on 26th 
> October.

Maybe a bit after the fact, as it looks like you are fairly deep into your 
investigation, but I have the source files for the links page(s). I've found 
the CSV files useful once I loaded them into a spreadsheet. I've been using 
open office on linux, but I'm sure excel on doze would suit just fine. Sorry 
I didn't think to offer this up sooner. At any rate email me and I send them 
too you if you think it might help out.

Jim

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"SharkD" <mik### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:4abd9146@news.povray.org...
> Chris B wrote:
>> I reckon that a web site would be best and simplest. There might be a 
>> mixture of pov, inc and ini files, plus maybe height field graphics etc. 
>> and it's easiest to just redistribute this sort of stuff as it comes.
>> If Sabrina has one at an educational institution she can probably save 
>> zip files, inc files etc. without the limitations that most of the free 
>> web site hosts put on that sort of thing (a limitation that geocities 
>> didn't suffer from).
>>
>> Regards,
>> Chris B.
>
> I would prefer the Wiki. Otherwise, we'd just be switching to another 
> "host" that might some day fail--and this time with little or no advance 
> warning.
>
> -Mike

I find myself agreeing with Chris on this one .... maybe the Wiki would suit 
for single files, but packages of files might prove cumbersome. As I 
mentioned earlier the built in Wiki export was designed to companion with 
the Wiki import feature. It works great on bundles of files that I've been 
moving from my test bed to the POV-Wiki but it doesn't include the images 
embedded with those files. I've had to upload those separately.

Jim

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"SharkD" <mik### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:4abd9146@news.povray.org...
> Chris B wrote:
>> I reckon that a web site would be best and simplest. There might be a 
>> mixture of pov, inc and ini files, plus maybe height field graphics etc. 
>> and it's easiest to just redistribute this sort of stuff as it comes.
>> If Sabrina has one at an educational institution she can probably save 
>> zip files, inc files etc. without the limitations that most of the free 
>> web site hosts put on that sort of thing (a limitation that geocities 
>> didn't suffer from).
>>
>> Regards,
>> Chris B.
>
> I would prefer the Wiki. Otherwise, we'd just be switching to another 
> "host" that might some day fail--and this time with little or no advance 
> warning.
>
> -Mike


Well a Wiki is really designed for collaborative document editing (a sort of 
Groupware function) rather than as an object database, a file repository or 
as a multi-media web-site. I suspect that trying to use a Wiki for this 
diverse sort of content (TGA files, CSV files, Videos, POV, INC and INI 
files) would be a cumbersome/painful process. I think the best option will 
be to add searchable and downloadable content into the POV-Ray Object 
Collection. The Object Collection is on a povray.org server, the same as the 
Wiki is, so should address your concerns about the server taking a dive. 
This still requires work/pain and getting permission to distribute stuff 
under the common Object Collection license (currently CC-LGPL).

I believe Sabrina's idea was as a sort of safety net because:
  o We might not get enough people with sufficient motivation to harvest all 
the material for the OC
  o This process may overrun the 26th Oct deadline
  o People may still wish to get hold of the original files for a while 
longer to support old scene files

I thought it was a very good idea. Taking a copy onto a Web site is still 
likely to be a chunky piece of work, but IMO, being able to copy most 
content in it's original form should be far less painful than trying to 
squidge it into the Wiki. Once it's all sifted through and consolidated onto 
a single Web Server I think it should probably be quite simple to dump the 
whole directory structure and maybe zip it up, create mirrors and backups 
etc. This should avoid losing it and should avoid the need to go through the 
same process in the future (at least with this particular content).

I think the best sort of stuff to harvest for the Wiki would be tutorials 
and tips style content (which I didn't see anyone volunteer for yet).


Regards,
Chris B.

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"Jim Holsenback" <jho### [at] povrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4abdd265$1@news.povray.org...
> "Chris B" <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote in message 
> news:4abcaa2b$1@news.povray.org...
>> As per Mike's note; Geocities is closing all its free websites on 26th 
>> October.
>
> Maybe a bit after the fact, as it looks like you are fairly deep into your 
> investigation, but I have the source files for the links page(s). I've 
> found the CSV files useful once I loaded them into a spreadsheet. I've 
> been using open office on linux, but I'm sure excel on doze would suit 
> just fine. Sorry I didn't think to offer this up sooner. At any rate email 
> me and I send them too you if you think it might help out.
>
> Jim

I should be able to read an Open Office spreadsheet.
Can you send it to chris.bartlett2 on the server virgin.net  (I'm assuming 
it's no more than a few hundred KB).

Regards,
Chris B.

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Chris B wrote:
> 
> "Jim Holsenback" <jho### [at] povrayorg> wrote in message
> news:4abce175@news.povray.org...
>> "Sabrina Kilian" <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote in message
>> news:4abcde80@news.povray.org...
>>> Thanks for gathering it all into links. I will go through and make a
>>> copy of anything that is available for download. In case we get in touch
>>> with anyone after the sites close, the source code and other stuff will
>>> still be available.
>>>
>>> And if it is free to redistribute under a non-CC license, I can drop it
>>> on my personal domain for others to use.
>>
>> It just occured to me the some of the macros that a new home can't be
>> found, could exsist on the Wiki enclosed in the <pre> </pre> tags,
>> then just use copy/paste to get the code. Wiki export page function
>> wraps things in xml maybe that's a possibility as well. I could follow
>> up if everyone thinks theres any merit.
>>
>> Jim
> 
> I reckon that a web site would be best and simplest. There might be a
> mixture of pov, inc and ini files, plus maybe height field graphics etc.
> and it's easiest to just redistribute this sort of stuff as it comes.
> If Sabrina has one at an educational institution she can probably save
> zip files, inc files etc. without the limitations that most of the free
> web site hosts put on that sort of thing (a limitation that geocities
> didn't suffer from).
> 
> Regards,
> Chris B.
> 
> 

The university does not provide very much in the way of storage or
access. But, I have what used to be google pages for lots of storage,
and a very cheap domain with lots (near unlimited) storage. The only
downside is paying bandwidth, which for text files is negligible.

If you all find more pages that need to be backed up, please post them
or email them to me. I will get to them as fast as I can.

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If there is no E-Mail item on your list, does this mean you
did not find one on the page? I had a look at the first two
entries on your objects list (8,12?) and found an email for
both. I have a bit of time this week to go address hunting
if this would be helpful to you ;)

Although any address which has been plain readable for years
on an abondoned geocities cite is probably dead by now ...

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Jim Holsenback wrote:
> I find myself agreeing with Chris on this one .... maybe the Wiki would suit 
> for single files, but packages of files might prove cumbersome. As I 
> mentioned earlier the built in Wiki export was designed to companion with 
> the Wiki import feature. It works great on bundles of files that I've been 
> moving from my test bed to the POV-Wiki but it doesn't include the images 
> embedded with those files. I've had to upload those separately.
> 
> Jim 

At least the progress list could be moved to the wiki.

-Mike

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Chris B wrote:
> As per Mike's note; Geocities is closing all its free websites on 26th 
> October.

Just a note, I already got permission and uploaded most of the stuff 
from this page to the Object Collection. Might want to double check to 
make sure I didn't miss anything.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6575/frames.html

-Mike

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SharkD wrote:
> Chris B wrote:
>> As per Mike's note; Geocities is closing all its free websites on 26th 
>> October.
> 
> Just a note, I already got permission and uploaded most of the stuff 
> from this page to the Object Collection. Might want to double check to 
> make sure I didn't miss anything.
> 
> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6575/frames.html
> 
> -Mike

Actually, I think I only uploaded the self-contained objects, not the 
whole scenes.

-Mike

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"SharkD" <mik### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:4abf3d1f$1@news.povray.org...
> Jim Holsenback wrote:
>> I find myself agreeing with Chris on this one .... maybe the Wiki would 
>> suit for single files, but packages of files might prove cumbersome. As I 
>> mentioned earlier the built in Wiki export was designed to companion with 
>> the Wiki import feature. It works great on bundles of files that I've 
>> been moving from my test bed to the POV-Wiki but it doesn't include the 
>> images embedded with those files. I've had to upload those separately.
>>
>> Jim
>
> At least the progress list could be moved to the wiki.
>
> -Mike

I think that would be a good idea for the potential Wiki content 
(Tutorials/Tips etc) http://povhouse.freewebsites.com/geocities/wiki.html 
and for the Galleries links 
http://povhouse.freewebsites.com/geocities/galleries.html.
I'm not planning to update those two lists further and it would mean that 
anyone interested in pursuing that content could manage it through the Wiki, 
so please feel free to go ahead with those two any time you like.

I'm still working on updates to the Utility and Objects spreadsheet. Having 
merged the CSV links data that Jim sent me I now plan to take the list down 
to a level more detail to enable individual downloadable content and author 
permissions to be tracked.

One word of caution about email addresses. The ones I've published so far 
are direct copies from existing web pages. If we get email addresses any 
other way then we should be careful and treat them as private data so that 
the poor souls don't get spammed to hell and back.

Regards,
Chris B.

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