Short:        7200 Product-Info files - 940308
Author:       fnf@fishpond.cygnus.com, et. al.
Uploader:     fnf fishpond cygnus com
Type:         fish/docs
Architecture: generic

This archive contains about 7200 Product-Info files, for material in
my floppy library (disks 1-975), and material from the first 3
FreshFish CD-ROM's.

Of these 7200 files, approximately 650 were created by either myself,
the authors of the material, or other interested parties.  The
remaining files were automatically generated from "Contents" files
that exist on each floppy and in some directories on the CD-ROM's.
These automatically generated files may contain both subtle and gross
errors.  Hopefully they will eventually be replaced with human
generated description files that are more accurate and more complete.
Part of the reason for making these files available is to encourage
interested parties (and particularly the authors) to submit better
replacements.

If you create replacements, please submit them to me in archived form
with their complete pathnames intact, so all I have to do is unarchive
them in a scratch directory somewhere, check them over, and then copy
the entire tree of replacement files on top of the old tree, so that
your replacements overwrite the files they are intended to replace.  I
do not want to have to hand copy hundreds of files to their
appropriate locations in the tree based on a description of where they
are intended to be placed.

As an example, suppose you are the author of "MuchMore", and wish to
clean up the Product-Info files in my database.  A search (or grep) of
the FileList file will reveal the following Product-Info files:

    AmigaLibDisk234/MuchMore/Product-Info
    AmigaLibDisk253/MuchMore/Product-Info
    AmigaLibDisk378/MuchMore/Product-Info
    AmigaLibDisk378/MuchMorePoPa/Product-Info
    AmigaLibDisk560/MuchMore/Product-Info
    AmigaLibDisk895/MuchMore/Product-Info
    AmigaLibDisk935/MuchMore/Product-Info
    AmigaLibDisk962/MuchMore/Product-Info
    FFMCD01/Old/AmigaLibDisks/Disks880-899/Disk895/MuchMore/Product-Info
    FreshFish-Dec93/New/AmigaLibDisks/Disk935/MuchMore/Product-Info
    FreshFish-Dec93/Old/AmigaLibDisks/Disks880-899/Disk895/MuchMore/Product-Info
    FreshFish-Mar94/New/AmigaLibDisks/Disk962/MuchMore/Product-Info
    FreshFish-Mar94/Useful/dist/text/show/MuchMore/Product-Info

The best way to work on these would be to copy this tree of files to a
scratch directory somewhere, make the appropriate changes, and then
archive up the entire tree (again, including pathnames) and submit the
lha archive to me via a email as a uuencoded lha archive.

Don't just make one Product-Info file and indiscriminately copy it
over all of the other Product-Info files for the same material.  At
the very least, the version numbers will almost certainly be
different.  The description of the material may change over time as
well.  This is OK.  Each Product-Info file should be as accurate as
possible for *that* *particular* *copy* of the corresponding material.
It is up to the database builder or user interface to decide how to
best present the material and link the different versions together.
One possibility, for example, is to display the latest version based
on either the ".version" field or the ".date" field, and provide links
to the other earlier versions based on either the ".references" field
or by building the links on the fly as each Product-Info is added to
the database or accessed.

Thanks for your help in improving these Product-Info files!

-Fred