Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv From: fekete@bcuxs2.bc.edu (Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq) Newsgroups: soc.culture.magyar,soc.culture.europe,soc.answers,news.answers Subject: Hungarian electronic resources FAQ Supersedes: Followup-To: soc.culture.magyar Date: 30 Apr 1994 14:08:15 GMT Organization: none Lines: 467 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Expires: 4 Jun 1994 14:07:33 GMT Message-ID: Reply-To: fekete@bc.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu Summary: This posting contains information on the use of email, other Internet tools and Usenet for persons with interest in Hungary, its people and/or language. Autoposted every 3 weeks. X-Last-Updated: 1994/02/20 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu soc.culture.magyar:3073 soc.culture.europe:20443 soc.answers:1120 news.answers:18825 Archive-name: hungarian-faq Last-modified: 1994/02/20 Version: 0.98.b This is part 1 of the FAQ for Hungarian news, discussions, and email. This part identifies what is available and gives basic instructions for getting it. Part 2 gives both fuller information and more complete instructions, as well as tips on how to search electronic archives for the information stored there. ####################################################################### # NOTE: Part 2 is included together with part 1 for this interim # release, expect separate files in the future! # New in 0.98: outdated FIDO section taken out - disregard the old one! # .a patched with new HIX info, gophers for HIX, CERRO and VOA, # newsgroup access at ELTE and promised bit.listserv.hungary newsgroup # corrected BBS.OIT.UNC.EDU from the outdated bbs.acs.unc.edu # .b corrected subs.all@hix.com scope ####################################################################### Please note that I threw together the renewed part on gophers rather hastily (in order to give something for everyone to get started on this great tool), I would especially welcome comments on how to clarify that. Part I has been re-edited a lot, so please read through for the new info (and, likely, more errors ;-)) introduced! Let me start with the many thanks we all owe to Kent Bales, whose superb work made me possible to finish the current version. Of course all errors are still my responsibility. As you may notice the content as well as the format is still too much in a flux to claim exceeding the v1.0 limit ;-(, but the upgrade is still free :-). Updated versions of these Frequently Asked Questions of Hungarian interest (with some answers) are posted to Usenet (and reposted every three weeks automatically if there are no changes to them) and occasionally to the email lists concerned. NEWS AND DISCUSSION GROUPS -Q: What services are available in Hungarian language? -A: A number of them from Hollosi Information Exchange. Recently it moved onto its own machine: HIX.COM, with the different services individually addressable (so please forget about the old XMAIL syntax)! There are six major services (check HELP for others!): HIRMONDO -- daily news (edited in Budapest) KEPUJSAG -- videotext news from Hungarian Television SZALON -- moderated political discussion forum FORUM -- unmoderated political discussion forum TIPP -- politics-free discussion, tips etc. MOKA -- jokes, humor (Hungarian and other) To get a long description (more than 600 lines!), send email to HELP@HIX.COM - the content of these letters are ignored. To {un}subscribe send email to {un}subs.all@HIX.COM, which refers to all available HIX subscriptions, or to {un}subs.NAME@HIX.COM, where NAME is any of 'hir', 'kep', 'mozaik', 'tipp', 'szalon', 'forum', 'otthonka', or 'moka'. The postings for the latter five are sent out daily in digested form. You can send your own submission to NAME@HIX.COM, where again NAME is to be substituted with the actual name of what you want to reach. Note that if you want to post some request you may have a better chance to be noticed on the HUNGARY LISTSERV list or the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.magyar (see below), than on the overflowing TIPP (which often digests dozens of messages in hundreds of lines daily)! The HIX server can also send out archived files (such as this one you are reading named 'hungarian-faq' in the 'computers' directory), see the SENDDOC function in its description. In case you have any problems or questions on the HIX services, please read through the automatic help response first. If you need human intervention you can reach supervisor@hix.com - but keep in mind that list managers have to do plenty other than answering things already laid out in the Fine Manual. The above are also available interactively with full-text search capability through the Internet service gopher. If you know what that beast is (or dare to try anyway :-)) then enter: gopher HIX.ELTE.HU. You really should get a program (called a gopher client) to access these services, if you don't have one yet! To get started, you can check out comp.infosystems.gopher on Usenet, or its associated FAQ from SENDDOC computers/gopher.faq. Note that the most recent version of this FAQ can be gotten through gopher, or via anonymous ftp from the Usenet FAQ archive: rtfm.mit.edu, the file is /pub/usenet/news.answers/gopher-faq. Those without FTP access should send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with "send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources" in the body to find out how to do FTP by e-mail. If you can telnet, try the host consultant.micro.umn.edu (in Europe use gopher.sunet.se) - or look for a closer and less overloaded server in Yanoff's INTERNET SERVICES LIST (which also has more other Internet stuff than you ever wanted to know :-), available via ftp/gopher csd4.csd.uwm.edu, or email to bbslist@aug3.augsburg.edu). For email only connection there are gophermail servers. You can get started by sending mail to gophermail@ncc.go.jp (or gophermail@calvin.edu) with any or no subject and any or no message body. GopherMail will reply by sending you it's main gopher menu. To get detailed help on using gophermail, email gophermail@ncc.go.jp with 'help' in the Subject: line (the other server does not seem to support this function). There are other valuable documents of Hungarian interest in the hix.elte.hu gopher archive, as well as links to the growing number of gopher servers in Hungary. You can start surfing gopherspace at gopher.elte.hu or sztaki.hu as well. Another source is the user-configurable email discussion group AGORA, distributed by my server ZFIX. To learn about it send email to AGORA@WORLD.STD.COM with $SEGITS as the Subject (the body of these messages gets ignored so you'd better not write in there ;-)). A third, SZEMLE, digests selected submissions as well as pieces from other forums in both Hungarian and English. Write to UJSAGKER@VUHEPX.PHY.VANDERBILT.EDU for information - to subscribe make Subject: KELL and include your name and address in the message. There are Hungarian local newsgroups (see more on Usenet below) available through telnet to ludens.elte.hu, login with username GUEST (no password), and enter NEWS to start the newsreader (you can use the VMS online help to learn about it). The guest account is set up for accessing elte.diaklap (students' journal at Eotvos U.), but other newsgroups are available as well. (But please be considerate to the strained network resources of Hungarian sites - from abroad for non-local news use other providers such as BBS.OIT.UNC.EDU shown below.) For ELTE-specific questions contact hiik@ludens.elte.hu. -Q: Are there Hungarian-related services primarily in English? -A: HUNGARY@GWUVM is a discussion group providing rapid communication among those with interests in Hungarian issues. Subscribe by email from LISTSERV@GWUVM.BITNET using no subject and a message consisting only of SUBSCRIBE HUNGARY Yourfirstname Lastname. Once you have subscribed, any messages which you want to send to the group should be sent to the group address, HUNGARY@GWUVM.BITNET. (This pattern of two addresses is standard: you turn your mail off and on at the "listserv" address, and you send mail to the listname address. For example, to unsubscribe, send the server the message SIGNOFF HUNGARY. You can temporarily turn off you mail by sending listserv the message SET HUNGARY NOMAIL. SET HUNGARY MAIL turns mail back on.) On Usenet there is soc.culture.magyar, mostly in English, sometimes bilingual, and occasionally Hungarian only. If you're not using Usenet, ask around your site -- it's available on many Internet hosts on what normally is known as the network news service. If you're under Unix, try the newsreaders rn, nn, vn or trn; under other operating systems it may be NEWSREADER or a similar name. If you don't have local access, try TELNET BBS.OIT.UNC.EDU (or the LAUNCHPAD.UNC.EDU alias; note that the old bbs.acs.unc.edu is no longer operative) or FREENET-IN-A.CWRU.EDU, where you can request a permanent guest account with Usenet privileges (among other things). Use FTP to learn more about Usenet from the archive site RTFM.MIT.EDU (starting with the file /pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers-intro, which lists a number of alternative archives located in Europe as well). If you do not have anonymous FTP access, you can access the archives by mail server as well. To learn how, see Part Two of this FAQ or send an email message to MAIL-SERVER@RTFM.MIT.EDU with HELP and INDEX on separate lines of the body (make sure you put the dash in the address above!). NOTE: RTFM used to be called differently, please use this new address instead of the old one that's being phased out! NEWS AND DISCUSSION OF EAST CENTRAL EUROPE -Q: Are there reports and discussions about Hungary in its political and geographical contexts? -A: Several. You can get daily transcripts of Radio Free Europe news from LISTSERV@UBVM.BITNET by sending the message SUBSCRIBE RFERL-L Yourfirstname Lastname. (Hungarian items in the RFE news are sometimes excerpted on Usenet's soc.culture.magyar.) The listserv at Buffalo also will subscribe you to the Middle European discussion list MIDEUR-L or to POLAND-L or SLOVAK-L. Send the usual SUBSCRIBE Command. On Usenet there is soc.culture.romanian, soc.culture.czecho-slovak, soc.culture.polish, and the gatewayed misc.news.east-europe.rferl, bit.listserv.mideur-l and bit.listserv.slovak-l (establishing bit.listserv.hungary is underway, it may show up on your news server soon). The Central European Regional Research Organization (CERRO) can be joined at LISTSERV@AEARN with the command SUBSCRIBE CERRO-L Firstname Lastname. This is a scholarly group that deposits papers and the like in an electronic archive in Vienna. The archive is accessible with anonymous FTP at wu-wien.ac.at, or with gopher at gopher.wu-wien.ac.at. A repository for Voice of America material accessible with gopher, gopher.voa.gov also contains some information and news items relevant to the region. -Q: What are the network connections with Hungary, including BBS networks such as FidoNet? -A: There are four network domains: kfki.hu (Central Research Institute for Physics), elte.hu (Eotvos University), sztaki.hu and all other *.hu addresses (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), and huearn.bitnet and huella.bitnet (also H.A.S.). FidoNet connects through sztaki.hu, as indicated above. Email is usually fast if you have the right address. For Internet mailings, don't forget to add a "hu" at the end for Hungary (eg.: correspondent@ella.hu); for Bitnet addresses, "Hungary" is in the nodename (ex.: correspondent@huella). (Note: huella.bitnet and ella.hu are equivalent.) There are three FidoNet nodes: Budapest NET (2:371/0); West Hungary Net (2:372/0); and Tisza NET (2:370/0). If you want to write on the FidoNet, chances are you already know how. *PLEASE* find out what you are about to do instead of experimenting with the Hungarian net - don't add to the problems for the folks in Hungary having to deal with the underdeveloped phone system and outrageous international tolls ;-<. For further information I post a Fido-sheet separately from this FAQ, where there are also telephone numbers and further addresses, but again: try to verify that you are mailing to a valid address (the BBS situation may have changed since the copy you are reading got updated - look for current FIDO listing on the net, or better yet contact the person you want to reach by other means first)!. If you can send Internet email and have the FidoNet address, you can write to it by transforming it to appropriate .FIDONET.ORG format. -Q: How do you contact someone in Hungary by email? -A: If you don't know the address, ask by using the old technology of pen, paper, and postage stamp (or telephone). There are attempts to establish directory services in Hungary but their availability to the outside world has seemed sporadic so far. At the moment your best bet is to use HIX's RADIR database - see above. Requesting it via email with SENDDOC should be your last resort given its huge size and unwieldy structure, but you may be able to search more easily online with gopher. Alternatively you might check out Radir's user list (HIX's SENDDOC feature will tell you how) or send an inquiry to a discussion group. Readers of Usenet's soc.culture.magyar and Bitnet's HUNGARY discussion list may be able to help. Or you can send a query to the postmaster of the Hungarian network or local server. (See Part Two of this FAQ for help.) -Q: How are Hungarian accented letters usually represented? -A: There are a number of solutions, mostly based on TeX. For starters check out SENDDOC programs etex.Z and hion.Z from HIX (see above) and also the babel system for LaTeX with Hungarian specific option, available from FTP sites kth.se or goya.dit.upm.es. Most commonly, a long vowel is marked with the numeral 1 (hi1d), a short "umlaut" with a 2, and a long one with a 3 (o3ru2lt). HOW TO IMPROVE THIS FAQ -Q: How should I send suggestions, hatemail etc. concerning this FAQ? -A: I hereby solicit any additions, corrections, suggestions or questions. My primary email address is fekete@bc.edu. *Please* note that due to the high volume of email messages without informative SUBJECT: lines get deleted without reading (and putting READ THIS won't do any good ;-) )! Begin the SUBJECT: line with the string ZFIX$KERDES (followed by a descriptive subject of your choice) to enable automatized mail handling. NOTE: the following is included together with part 1 for this interim release, expect separate files in the future! Part 2 Part 2 amplifies information on Hungarian news, discussions, and email and adds information about useful computer resources, computing in Hungary, and other such technical matters. Updated versions of these Frequently Asked Questions of Hungarian interest (with some answers) are posted to Usenet and the email lists concerned about every two weeks. BASICS: BITNET, INTERNET, USENET, INDEPENDENT, AND COMMERCIAL NETWORKS Your access varies depending upon the net you operate within. Bitnet discussion lists leave messages in your mailbox, and you send mail messages to all other list members by writing to the list address. Internet users can easily subscribe because the two networks have many "gateways" or nodes where the networks intersect. Usenet and independents such as FidoNet are different. They forward messages to and from their nodes, using Internet gateways whenever possible for long-distance relays, but they don't have access to Bitnet discussion lists. (You, however, can have somebody you know who has Bitnet access forward list messages to and for you. This is frequently done.) Many Internet and Usenet nodes participate in Usenet News, a world-wide, volunteer aggregation of discussion groups which one joins and participates in by calling up the discussion-group messages stored for that purpose. More an extensive bulletin board than a mailbox, it is cheaper to operate because it uses much less memory. All members of soc.culture.magyar, for example, read messages stored at a few sites; all members of Bitnet's HUNGARY read the same message stored in mailboxes all over the world. At Bitnet-Internet gateways, Bitnet users can usually get access to Usenet News by behaving as though they are Internet users. (Ask how, locally.) Otherwise they can use Telnet (TELNET BBS.OIT.UNC.EDU or TELNET FREENET-IN-A.CWRU.EDU, where you can request a permanent guest account with Usenet privileges, among other things). Independent nodes usually don't give access to all Usenet News groups -- only to those most interesting to their users -- so make yourself heard if you use an independent. Commercial nets usually are the same, giving access to the most popular groups on Usenet and other discussion networks. RETRIEVING OLD NEWS AND DISCUSSIONS: FTP AND MAIL RETRIEVALS Some Usenet groups and virtually all Bitnet lists store old messages in archives, which can be searched by the fileserver or by FTP. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is available on the Internet but, for technical reasons, not on Bitnet or the others. Bitnet provides a retrieval service, however. Write to BITFTP@PUCC with HELP as the message and you will receive full instructions. Some of them will be irrelevant to getting messages from the archives. The concepts should become clearer from what follows. First you must know what to ask for, and for a list that you know about or belong to you can simply ask LISTSERV to tell you what's in the archive. Say you want material from Bitnet's HUNGARY list. Write LISTSERV@GWUVM.BITNET with the message LISTDOC HUNGARY, and you'll get back the name(s) of the archived files, probably listed by month. You won't need FTP to get these. Commands for getting them, however, vary from list to list, group to group. To get E-EUROPE's list, you first ask LISTSERV@PUCC the following: INDEX E-EUROPE. Then, having found the files or month that you want, you send the command GET E-EUROPE filetype-thus-and-so (as determined from the index). Sometimes LISTSERV will tell you the precise form of the the command, but it is good to have handy BITNET USERHELP, gotten from NETSERV@BITNIC.BITNET with the command GET BITNET USERHELP. FTP is a UNIX process which lets you transfer files from a distant computer to your own system if you're on Internet. A good way of testing if it's available is simply to type FTP at your prompt. If you are prompted for an address, you've got FTP! So either type the address you want or start again and do all on one line: ftp ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (This example is for the archive of the Humanities Computing Facility at UCSB, thanks to Eric Dahlin). Log on with the name "anonymous," and use your e-mail address as a password. Next, move to the directory containing the files by entering the command: cd hcf Now that you're in the correct directory, you can get a list of all the file names by entering the command: ls Then, to transfer any of the files to your own system, enter the command: get filename It's often wise to transfer first the file called "readme," which may show the contents of each of the files in the directory and certainly will tell you more about that directory. If you don't know in advance what directory to change to, move through the directory tree using the "ls" command and wise guesses about where you want to go. With luck, you'll get what you want. The commands may be strange (if you're a stranger to UNIX, but you need only a few. UNIX is case-sensitive, so use lower-case letters, as indicated here. Finally, end your session with the "quit" command. If "quit" won't get you out, try "bye" or "logout" (or Ctrl-D from Unix). (Anonymous FTP is also the usual method for getting public domain and "freeware" or "shareware" software from the many archives around the world. The courtesy asked for by these archives is that for large transfers you use anonymous ftp only after hours, when machine time isn't needed for big jobs.) Most archive files are compressed, so you'll have to uncompress them. If you need to learn about this, ftp oak.oakland.edu, cd /pub/msdos/starter and get 00-index.txt. Text files are often simply ZIPped. These can be downloaded all the way to your machine, then unzipped with an UNZIP program. PKZIP and UNZIP are available through Gopher and locally from a BBS. HELP WITH FINDING THE RIGHT FILE AND DIRECTORY: ARCHIE AND GOPHER There are shortcuts, so that you find precisely the file and its location(s) by searching a database. In or near Canada, Telnet to ARCHIE.MCGILL.CA; in the U.S., Telnet ARCHIE.SURA.NET (in MD), ARCHIE.UNL.EDU (in NE), ARCHIE.ANS.NET (in NY), or ARCHIE.RUTGERS.EDU (in NJ). Or you can TELNET a GOPHER, which will include FTP sites on its menu. Choose that option and, as with ARCHIE, give GOPHER names or key words to look up. What you'll get is a list of sites, complete with full directory pathways, to files containing in their names the word or words you asked to be searched. Knowing this, you can confidently proceed to follow the Anonymous FTP retrieval instructions given above. Or you can let GOPHER do the work for you. It will write the file to your computer account, and you can then download it. GOPHER is now in use at a number of sites around the world, including Vienna and Graz, so that Hungarian electronic archives should be searchable with Gopher's aid. Gopher plugs right into Archie sites. Because it also usually contains electronic addresses for local users, it may soon be a good source for Central European e-mail addresses. CONSULTANT.MICRO.UMN.EDU is the grandparent GOPHER site, and you can get a complete list of current GOPHERs from CONSULTANT. E-MAIL AND OTHER COMPUTING IN HUNGARY Hungary's four domains (basically four separate lines) are these: kfki.hu (Central Research Institute for Physics) elte.hu (Eotvos University[Budapest]) sztaki.hu and all other *.hu (Automation and Computerization Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences) huearn.bitnet and huella.bitnet. They connect to the world as follows: ------------ ___ /| UUCP nodes | / \____/ ------------ | X | X25 ------------ | 2 |-----| ELLA users | / 5 \ ------------ To Linz, \ / ----------- dial-up ------ 9.6 kbps | N | X.25 | |---------| UUCP | ^ | e |------| sztaki | ... ====== | / t / | EUnet BB |---------| nodes| X25| \ w \ -----------\ ------ SLIP --- | | o | | `--------------------------------| H | | | r | ----------- ----------- | B |---- | k | | gateway |---------| | BSC | O | \ _/ ----------- | HUEARN |-----------| X | |__/ \ | | | --- \X25 ----------- ----------- \ | | `---| ELLA |----(dial-up) | (IIF) | users ----------- Hungary has a connection to EARN (European Research Network) which is a 9.6 kbps leased line from Budapest to Linz. They use the same line through a multiplexer to connect the EUnet backbone to mcsun and the Internet. There is a local gateway between the EUnet backbone and the EARN national backbone. It is possible to connect to the EUnet backbone using the national X.25 network or dial-up lines up to 9.6 kbps speed. There is also a central mailbox system called ELLA that individual users can connect to. Most universities and research institutes are connected to the ELLA mail-only network (typical address: userid@huella.bitnet). Part One of this FAQ tells how to get addresses. You can also ask the postmasters for help. ELLA's is h1006pos@huella. (Or h1006pos@ella.hu, Internet style.) NOTE: Fidonet mail works with Hungarian BBS's but you have to know whom to reach. I will attempt to maintain a separate Fido posting to Usenet; please try to make sure you email to a valid address and in particular avoid using outdated sources on Hungarian BBS's (otherwise your misdirected trial burden the Hungarian network coordinator)! TRAVELLING WITH A COMPUTER IN HUNGARY The electricity is 220 volt, 50 cycles, but in fact it fluctuates a lot. A battery driven laptop or notebook is your best bet. You can drive a printer through a simple small converter, but check plug types in advance. The Hungarian standard is two-pronged, and your computer or printer may well be three-pronged. The converter may also be three-pronged stepped down to two-pronged, but check before you leave. Just in case, take along one three-prong to two-prong plug adapter, to if you want to plug in the battery charger and the printer at the same time. You want e-mail? If you will be working at a university or research institute or large business, chances are you can get access to ELLA. But if it's just a visit, the best is to get on the FidoNet. -- Zoli Fekete, email: fekete@bc.edu (preferred, or fekete@bcvms.bc.edu) alternative addresses: at530 on the Cleveland Freenet Zoli.Fekete@lambada.oit.unc.edu on the UNC BBS "For my assured failures and derelictions, I ask pardon beforehand of my betters and my equals in my calling." - Rudyard Kipling