GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO GET INFORMATION INTO AND OUT OF mp_arc >> short description of all mp_arc e-mail requests mp_arc is an electronic archive for research papers in Mathematical Physics. To get information into and out of mp_arc, send an E-mail message to mathphysicsarchive@gmail.com containing, among other things, EXACTLY ONE of the following lines: REQUEST: send instructions REQUEST: send index REQUEST: send abstracts REQUEST: send papers REQUEST: send converted REQUEST: send mlist REQUEST: add mlist REQUEST: drop mlist REQUEST: read comment REQUEST: send info REQUEST: archive paper REQUEST: remove paper Below is a short description of these "other things"; they depend on the request chosen. Note: Every request (even if not recognized) generates a reply to the sender. ---- The request "send instructions". ------------------------------- For some of the requests listed above, there are (or will be in the future) more options available than the ones mentioned here. To get the instructions e.g. on how to archive a paper, mail the two lines given in Example 1. Example 1: REQUEST: send instructions FOR: archive paper More generally, the argument to "FOR:" can be a comma separated list of valid requests like "archive paper, add mlist, send abstracts". The request "send index". ----------------------- The choices available (so far) are illustrated in the following two examples. Example 2: (send the index for the years 91, 92, and 93) REQUEST: send index YEARS: 91, 92, 93 Example 3: (send the index beginning with paper 91-12) REQUEST: send index BEGINNING: 91-12 If neither a line "YEAR: ..." nor a line "BEGINNING: ..." is found, the index for the last two years will be sent. The index lists the number, authors, and title of each paper, as well as the size (in Kilobytes) and format of the corresponding file. Among the possible formats are: TeX; LaTeX; AMS-TeX; ps (Postscript); eps (encapsulated Postscript); tt (plain "typewriter type" text); shar, TeX (UNIX shell archived TeX files); etc ... The request "send abstracts". --------------------------- Abstracts can be requested either by number or by keywords (but not both in the same request). Example 4: REQUEST: send abstracts NUMBER: 91-2, 91-10, 91-12, 91-33, 91-35 When keywords are specified, they are matched against words (strings) in a) the title b) the list of authors c) the keywords sent in by the author(s) d) the abstract of each paper in the archive. The following request will retrieve (the abstracts of) all papers for which either "stable" or "doe sym dynamic" produces a match. Example 5: REQUEST: send abstracts KEYWORDS: stable, doe sym dynamic Here, the comma between "stable" and "doe sym dynamic" corresponds to a logical OR, and the blank spaces in "doe sym dynamic" correspond to a logical AND. For example, each one of these two strings would, by itself, retrieve (the abstracts of) a paper "Stable Hamiltonians" by "John Doe" which includes "symbolic dynamics" in the list of keywords; or a paper entitled "On dynamical symmetry breaking" which contains "metastable" among its keywords, and which mentions "Doe" somewhere in the abstract. Notes: 1) One and two letter words (strings) in the "KEYWORDS:" are ignored. And unspecific words like "for", "about", "explain", "interesting", etc., will not produce a match; they have been eliminated from our keyword file. 2) Comma separated lists may extend over several lines, as in the following example. Example 6: (equivalent to Example 4) REQUEST: send abstracts NUMBER: 91-2, 91-10 NUMBER: 91-12, 91-33, 91-35 The request "send mlist". ----------------------- To get the mailing list, simply send the line "REQUEST: send mlist". This public mailing list contains the name and E-mail address (in the format used by our UNIX mailer) of all people who have sent in the request "add mlist", as shown in Example 7, during the past 2 years. The request "add mlist". ---------------------- Example 7: REQUEST: add mlist NAME: Your Name This initiates (or renews) your subscription for the weekly list of abstracts and adds your name and E-mail address (taken from the Mail header) to the public mailing list. Addresses that generate too much returned mail and entries that are older than two years (this criterion may be changed or dropped in the future) get removed, in order to keep down the number of addresses that are no longer valid. To avoid that (one of) your E-mail address(es) gets eliminated from the mailing list, simply add it again before the two years are up (for a short time, the address will appear twice in the list, since old entries are eliminated only once a week). If you would like to subscribe to the weekly list of abstracts without appearing on the public mailing list, just omit the line NAME: Your Name Note: The abstracts of papers that have been archived on Thursday(n-1) ... Wednesday(n) will usually be mailed out on Sunday(n) around 00:00 a.m. central time. The request "drop mlist". ----------------------- The one-line request "REQUEST: drop mlist" will remove the E-mail address (which may include the address of intermediate gateways) of its sender from the mailing list (if it is on the list). To "drop mlist" from an address other than that of the corresponding "add mlist", a second line of the form NUMBER: yy-nn-zz is required, where "yy-nn-zz" is a number given in the reply to "add mlist". The request "send papers". ------------------------- Papers can only be requested by their numbers (listed in the index). Example 8: REQUEST: send papers NUMBER: 91-12 Example 9: REQUEST: send papers NUMBER: 91-2, 91-10, 91-12 Notes: 1) The instructions for "archive paper" include some guidelines and recommendations for authors on how to avoid (or assist the reader in solving) certain known incompatibility problems between different machines, mailers, TeX versions, etc. If you have difficulties converting a paper file into a readable paper, please notify the author by E-mail and notify us of the problem and cure (through the "read comment" request of the system) so we can alert other people. 2) The "papers" with numbers 90-1, 90-2, ... , are utilities (programs, TeX macros, etc.) that we have found useful in fixing incompatibility problems. Eventually, these utilities will be kept in a separate database, and there will be requests like "list utilities" and "send utilities" ... 3) It is also possible to download a paper in compressed form by adding ONE of the two following lines to the request "send papers". FILTER: compress FILTER: zip FILTER: gzip These compression filters can dramatically reduce the size of a text file (typically by a factor of 1/3), and we recommend that you use one of these options when downloading long papers, in order to reduce mail traffic. The compressed files are sent out in uuencoded form. Thus, it is necessary to uudecode them first before they can be decompressed. The corresponding programs "uudecode", "uncompress", and "unzip", are available for almost any type of computer. The request "send converted". ---------------------------- mp_arc attempts to automatically produce a Postscript or PDF version of each submitted paper. These "converted" papers can be downloaded using the request "send converted", which is similar to "send papers". Example 10: REQUEST: send converted NUMBER: 91-12 Example 11: REQUEST: send converted NUMBER: 91-2, 91-10, 91-12 Notes: 1) "Converted" papers are either in PS or PDF format, compressed with the utility gzip, and base64 encoded for shipping. The utility gzip used for (un)compressing files is available (in the public domain) for almost any system. 2) Since mp_arc does not impose any restrictions on the format of submitted papers, the conversion program may not always succeed. And even if a .ps.gz or .pdf.gz file is generated, it is possible that some information contained in the original paper (e.g. figures) is not included in the converted paper! In oder to download the source code as submitted by the author(s), use the request "send papers". The request "send info". ---------------------- Example 12: (send information about how to access mp_arc by ftp) REQUEST: send info SUBJECT: using ftp If the line "SUBJECT: ..." is omitted, a list will be sent of all subjects on which info is available. The request "read comment". ------------------------- If you have any suggestions, or want to report a problem, send a regular E-mail message that includes somewhere the line REQUEST: read comment but no other line of the form "REQUEST: ...". Such messages will eventually be read by a human. The requests "archive paper" and "remove paper". ---------------------------------------------- The instructions on how to archive or remove a paper can be obtained by using the request "send instructions", as shown in Example 1. ********************** W A R N I N G ************************ * In all the above it is important that the line headers * * like "REQUEST:", "NUMBER:", etc., be written in CAPITAL * * letters and at the BEGINNING of a line. * *************************************************************