ASF 1.3.0   August 24, 1999

		


Release 1.3.0 of the Advanced Search Facility (ASF) freeware is
now available at the ASF home page <>. 
ASF is an implementation of a system designed to create locator records,
support searching of the locator records for information  or searching
original documents and supporting the development of information communities
through sharing of locator records.

The software components include:

	o Crawler
	o Locator Record Generator
	o Indexer
	o HTTP server
	o Search Engine
	o Z39.50 server
	o Control Structure

This release has updated versions of nearly all of the software
components and some significant functional enhancements. This release
is a developmental release which has known bugs (see partial list below). 
The first beta quality release anticipated to be capable
of sustaining significant use will be version 1.4.0.

The distribution contains:

	o all the source code
	o sample crawl
	o sample crawl scenario
	o sample files lists
	o sample database
	o sample GILS prototypes
	o sample raw GILS records

Updates
	o Update Apache to 1.3.9
	o Update Pavuk to  0.9pl18
	o Update Isearch to 1.46a (ISITE/ISEARCH  2.06d)
	o Update YAZ to Revision 1.7
	o Update ZAP to Revision 1.28


New Features

	o This release will automatically create GILS records for
    	  each document in a document set
    		-   Using global document metadata template
    		-   For certain document types, using "fields" already present
       		    in the document (e.g. Title in HTML documents)
		-   Using information obtained from the crawler
	o Crawl configuration page including crawl scenarios
	o User interface additions
	o all software now GPL or similar
	o enhanced configuration
	o preliminary support for NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS and the like (as yet untested) -
		courtesy of Dirk-Willem van Gulik

Bug Fixes

	o The "Crawl" function for obtaining documents from remote
    	  locations is much more stable
  	o Many fixes have been made to the software

Known Problems

	o Centroids subsystem is non-functional
	o Search on  not yet available in UI (expected in 1.3.1)
	o Minor problems fetching some URLs with pavk.
	o Does pass files list back to pavuk to constrain crawl (expected in 1.3.1)
	o Handle HTML "meta" tags more fully in GILS record generation
	o Duplicate headers in GILS records.


Authors

	ASF is intended to be a framework that will allow search components from
	many vendors to interoperate. This ASF freeware is the result of the hard
	work of many individuals. In particular this distribution incorporates:

		o Apache HTTP Server (http:///www.apache.org/)
		o PAVUK web crawler  (http://www.idata.sk/~ondrej/pavuk/)
		o Isearch            (http://http://www.cnidr.org/ir/isearch.html/)
				     (http://www.etymon.com/Isearch/)
				     (ftp://www.awcubed.com/Software/)
		o YAZ-ZAP-Z39.50     (http://www.indexdata.dk/)
		o tidy		     (http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/)
		o libemerge	     (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/futrelle/)
	        o structure	     (http://www.islandedge.com/)
		o sha		     (Scott G. Miller)
		o General            (http://www.fsf.org/)
				     (http://www.redhat.com)
				     (http://www.usgs.gov)