A raw MySQL dump of Manx is now online: vt100.net/manx/dump. I think there was an XML dump at some point, which linked publications and copies, but I don’t know how that was generated at the moment.
I’ve scribbled two pages of notes about Manx’s schema and philosophy which need typing up at some point. Well, “philosophy” is a grand word for it, but I mean some notes which explain why the database is organised a certain way, and how it is more than a list of documents. Manx is very much geared to cataloguing technical documentation, and a proper discussion of the features may help future maintainers.
The code that powers Manx needs some organisation and separating from the back-end scripts, many of which are obsolete and would only serve to obscure your understanding of the application. I’ll get round to that (hopefully) shortly.
The database is free for you to use in any way you see fit.
Manx, my catalogue of online manuals for old computers, is now dead. There are several reasons for this.
The most important reason is that I haven’t had time to maintain it for the last couple of years, and priorities in my life have changed so far that I don’t imagine I’ll ever get back to it. If I left the database online, it would only disappoint people as the catalogue covered a decreasing percentage of the available scanned documentation.
Unfortunately, when it was maintained, it was by a set of arcane scripts and command line wizardry that went straight to the database. There never was any decent graphical interface, and therefore there isn’t anything to pass to another maintainer. They’d either have to follow the same painful route as me, or spend a lot of time coding an interface.
I should have coded a graphical interface to allow people to contribute to the database a long time ago, but I don’t have much evidence of interest in its development. Many years ago, I received a few requests for copies of the database, and I sent them out. I also put database dumps online, so if anyone fancied building tools and feeding back the results, they could do so. However, I never heard from anyone who found them useful, or had any ideas for improvements.
Another reason for its demise is that Google is now OCRing scanned material, which will eventually make all of these archives searchable. Of course that isn’t the same as a catalogue, but the main purpose of putting documents online is to make them findable by, and useful to, more people. Cataloguing appeals to my desire to put things in order, but it isn’t a big thrill, as hobbies go. I’d rather work on attaining Shodan.
I had an email yesterday from someone who’d been scanning documents and contributing them to some of the sites covered by Manx, including Bitsavers. Having a large stash of DEC documentation, he wanted to make sure he directed his efforts towards those documents that aren’t already scanned, so he asked for a list of all the DEC documents in Manx, and whether any copies were known to exist online.
I’ve put the dump online, in case others find it useful: DEC documentation status.
This is likely out of date, because I don’t know what proportion of the DEC documentation online is not yet catalogued in Manx. I don’t even know what proportion of Bitsavers’ holdings are not covered, and I could at least calculate that.
I used to put fuller dumps of Manx online, and supplied complete dumps by email to a number of other archivists, but I no longer generate them as I never heard from anyone who’d found them useful. Nevertheless, if you’d like a particular report from Manx, please contact me, as it may help in planning the new facilities for users.
