2.0

[Thunderstone]

Looks exciting. I am sure you are prepared for the barrage of questions.

1. How much to upgrade from the 1.0 commercial?

2. Is 2.0 faster in addition to being more customizable and the wonderful
walking changes.

3. Can I safely install the free 2.0 to test on the same machine
that my commercial 1.0 is on? Anything, we should know before doing such a
test drive (e.g. create a new cgi-bin area so the new webinator.exe doesn't
clobber the old one)?

4. Do I understand the scripts for 1.0 database correctly - If I set
up the vortex script compiler, I can use scripts with my commercial
1.0 webinator and database files?

5. Am I correct in that, regardless of the interface example, the input
is in set notation, i.e. English AND, ORs, etc are not supported (but could be
in a script)

6. Do you plan on creating a share-script area?

---------------------------------------------------------------
Larry Rudner rudner@cua.edu
ERIC Clearinghouse on 800 464-3742 (800 Go4-ERIC)
Assessment and Evaluation 202 673-3811
Catholic University of America FAX: 202 319-6692
Washington, DC 20064 http://ericae2.educ.cua.edu

[Thunderstone]

Thanks, we're pretty enthused about it too.

As we stated in our last message, commercial upgrades will be free, for
a limited time, as long as the platform is the same and you do not wish
to obtain hardcopy manuals and the CD.


Was it slow before? If you are doing an apples-to-apples comparison,
all aspects of 2.0 are roughly the same speed as 1.0. However, you
may make use of features in 2.0 that were not possible before that
could make certain aspects execute faster.

You may install free 2.0 over commercial 1.0, HOWEVER: you should
make a copy of /cgi-bin/webinator before you install 2.0. After
you're done installing 2.0 put the Commercial 1.0 Webinator executable
back in /cgi-bin


Yes.



Thunderstone has compiled feedback information over the last 17 years with
regard to the use of the use of the English versions of "AND OR NOT" with
respect to their Boolean counterparts. Significant numbers of people
are not aware of the functional differences and ambiguity of the meanings.

Eg: "Spot and not Dick and Jane" vs. "Spot and not Dick or Jane"

possible interpretations:

(Spot!(Dick&Jane)) ((Spot!Dick)&Jane) vs. (Spot!(Dick|Jane)) ((Spot!Dick)|Jane)

It is for this reason that we have chosen to use the text query syntax
that we use. We are not alone in this belief, several research papers
have also addressed this issue and several other engines have adopted
a text syntax similar to ours.


Sounds like a great idea. We will have to do that.