--- ../EC/$Id: README,v 3.2 1996/01/08 09:49:36 joke Rel $ Welcome to ___ _ _ ______ _ _ ___ (TM) / -_) ' \/ _/ _ \ '_/ -_) \___|_||_\__\___/_| \___| The Evolutionary Computation Repository Network "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO LEARN TODAY?" Dortmund (DE) * Santa Fe, NM (US) * Hong Kong (HK) * Birmingham (UK) Pasadena, CA (US) * East Lansing, MI (US) * Detroit, MI (US) Capetown (ZA) * Berlin (DE) * West Lafayette, IN (US) Oviedo (ES) * Granada (ES) * Girona (ES) * * * "We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." -- Albert Einstein -= * =- INTRODUCTION This directory hierarchy, titled ENCORE, contains a documented collection, i.e., compilation of electronically available resources related to the field of Evolutionary Computation (EC). It is divided into several categories that reflect the current main research paradigms: Genetic Algortihms (GA), Evolution Strategies (ES), Evolutionary Programming (EP), Genetic Programming (GP), and Classifier Systems (CFS). All these specialized sub-hierarchies are completed with a general Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) folder for hybrid or other approaches not contained in the previous list. Electronically available resources in this context means compressed PostScript (cf CONVENTIONS) versions of research papers, and journal articles; publicly available software packages, and test data sets. Moreover, ENCORE provides a place for the FAQ (list of Frequently Asked Questions and their respective answers) of the USENET newsgroup comp.ai. genetic, for easy access between postings, i.e., the 6 ASCII parts, and the some 90 pages PostScript version. ENCORE is not located at a single location, but a network of servers carrying the same information. This is necessary, due to the many bottlenecks of todays Internet that surely has come of age. You thus can chose your nearest "EClair", as we call the single nodes in the ENCORE network: ENCORE VIA FTP This is the EClair at UUNET Deutschland GmbH ftp://ftp.de.uu.net/pub/research/softcomp/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at the Santa Fe Institute ftp://alife.santafe.edu/pub/USER-AREA/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The Chinese University of Hong Kong ftp://ftp.cs.cuhk.hk/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The California Institute of Technology ftp://ftp.krl.caltech.edu/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at Wayne State University ftp://ftp.cs.wayne.edu/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The Michigan State University ftp://ftp.egr.msu.edu/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The University of Capetown ftp://ftp.uct.ac.za/pub/mirrors/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at Technical University of Berlin ftp://ftp-bionik.fb10.tu-berlin.de/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at Purdue University ftp://coast.cs.purdue.edu/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The University of Oviedo ftp://zeus.etsimo.uniovi.es/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The University of Granada ftp://krypton.ugr.es/pub/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The University of Girona ftp://gnomics.udg.es/pub/encore/EC/Welcome.html This is the EClair at The University of Birmingham, UK ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/Mirrors/ftp.de.uu.net/EC/Welcome.html * * * ENCORE VIA THE WORLD-WIDE WEB This is the Clife site at The University of Birmingham, UK http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/Mirrors/ftp.de.uu.net/EC/clife/ This is the Clife site at The University of Girona, SPAIN http://gnomics.udg.es/~encore/ This is the Clife site at The University of Granada, SPAIN http://krypton.ugr.es/~encore/ This is the Clife site at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA http://www.cs.purdue.edu/coast/archive/clife/Welcome.html This is the Clife site at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA http://alife.santafe.edu/~joke/encore/ This is the Clife site at UUNET Deutschland GmbH, Dortmund, GERMANY http://research.de.uu.net:8080/encore/ * * * "THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO EC" VIA THE WORLD-WIDE WEB This is the Clife site at The University of Birmingham, UK http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/Mirrors/ftp.de.uu.net/EC/clife/www/ This is the Clife site at The University of Girona, SPAIN http://gnomics.udg.es/~encore/www/ This is the Clife site at The University of Granada, SPAIN http://krypton.ugr.es/~encore/www/ This is the Clife site at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA http://www.cs.purdue.edu/coast/archive/clife/Welcome.html This is the Clife site at The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA http://alife.santafe.edu/~joke/encore/www/ This is the Clife site at UUNET Deutschland GmbH, Dortmund, GERMANY http://research.de.uu.net:8080/encore/www/ * * * ENCORE access by e-mail is currently only available via the EClair at EUnet. Send e-mail to our Softbot Squirrel, aka with "help" in the message body for a short description of the commands recognized by Squirrel. As an example, we show how to get the latest copy of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation", aka the FAQ to Usenet's comp.ai.genetic; and the "Clicky Interface to ENCORE" (Clife), that allows for click & point navigation of your nearest ENCORE site, plus several dozen other relevant repositories, newsgroups, and websites. (Where "relevant" means: Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, Bioinformatics, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Cellular Automata, Fuzzy Systems, L-Systems, Nanotechnology, Neural Networks, and Simulated Annealing). To: archive-server@de.uu.net Subject: -- begin get research/softcomp/EC/FAQ/hhgtec.ps.gz get research/softcomp/EC/etc/html/README.clive get research/softcomp/EC/etc/html/clive.tar.gz quit -= * =- CONVENTIONS All folders in the ENCORE hierarchy contain a file, named README, which holds information on all the other files in that particular folder. The addressing scheme for any file in ENCORE is simply the relative path to that file, below the unique ENCORE "../EC" entry point on any EClair. E.g. the README that lists all papers in the genetic algorithm section will be referred to as "../EC/GA/papers/README". Note that this is necessary, because the path to the unique ENCORE entry point, might be different on different servers. For a general overview refer to "../EC/OVERVIEW". The complete contents of ENCORE, i.e. a concatenation of all README files, is available in "../EC/CONTENTS" All PostScript and ".tar" files have been compressed to reduce disk space using the GNU compression utility "gzip". You thus have to use "gunzip" to decompress the files after downloading. See below for a list of the GNU project mirror sites around the globe in case you don't have it yet. For further explanations consult "The Navigator's Guide to ENCORE". It's available as "../EC/handbook/encore.ps.gz" for A4 paper, and "../EC/handbook/encore-US.ps.gz" contains an US letter size version. -= * =- FORMATS Some of the papers contained in this collection are formatted according to standard A4 paper; some use US letter size. If you print out a paper and find that some lines on top have been chopped off, you're probably printing a A4 formatted paper on a US letter size sheets of paper. In this case, you simply should prepend the file ../EC/etc/ps/a4-fix.ps to the PostScript paper using your favourite text editor. Anyway, previewing a paper with e.g., the freely available GhostView/ghostscript from GNU is always recommended, prior to printing. -= * =- CONTRIBUTIONS Your contributions are always welcome. Send papers, software, etc. via e-mail to the current ENCORE maintainer, preferably including a short (3-4 lines) description, that can just be "dropped" into the appropriate README file. Moreover, it's recommended to format papers such that they can be printed on both A4 and US letter size PostScript printers. Please, upload your files using FTP to: ftp://ftp.de.uu.net/incoming/encore Thanx in advance for your interest in FREE GLOBAL INFORMATION SHARE! -= * =- LANGUAGES Most of the current contents of ENCORE is written in English, apart from 3 papers in German, and 1 in Greek. If you have introductory texts available in languages other than English, don't worry. You're strongly encouraged to make these avail. via ENCORE; we try to become as "multilingual" as possible. -= * =- MIRRORING If you want your site to become an official EClair, and want to be added to the official crop of ENCORE sites, all you need to do is to (a) properly install a mirror kit, e.g. ftp://ftp.de.uu.net/pub/networking/tcpip/ mirror/mirror-2.3.tar.gz and (b) have a short check up with the current ENCORE maintainer. (c) please mirror "as is" without any modification, e.g., additonal compression, of the files, since this invalids some of the WWW/HTML frontend's pointers. Some frequently asked questions that usually arise when new sites contact us to carry an EClair are summarized in ../EC/RESOURCES You're welcome anytime. -= * =- INQUIRIES Inquiries addressing general SFI specific issues, e.g. FTP server related problems, should be directed to Nelson Minar for the EClair at Santa Fe; Angus Siu for the server at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Martyn Amos for the mirror at the University of Warwick, UK; Chan-Jin Chung for the mirror at Wayne State U. Russell Vincent at the University of Capetown, South Africa. Yao-Chaing Kan for the mirror at MSU. And Ivan Santibanez-Koref for the mirror at Technical University of Berlin. Mark Joseph Crosbie is apparantly responsible for the EClair & Clife site on Purdue University's COAST server, IN, USA. And Marc Schoenauer at Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France. Antonio Bello keeps track of the EClair at University of Oviedo, Spain; Heitor Silverio Lopes hosts the EClair at CEFET-PR, Curitiba, Brazil. JJ Merelo Guervos is responsible for the Clife site at Granada University, Spain. Send everything else related to ENCORE, i.e. suggestions, contributions, corrections, and all the fish to: joke@de.uu.net -= * =- DISCLAIMER ENCORE'S CONTENTS IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF SOFTWARE DRAWN FROM ENCORE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD A PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. Users assume the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of the files drawn from ENCORE. The files may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions: 1) All text must be copied without modification and all pages must be included; 2) All copies must their original copyright notice and any other notices provided therein; and 3) Files may not be distributed for profit. -= * =- APPENDIX The GNU (http://www.gnu.org/) project's (un-)compression program gzip(1)/gunzip(1), that has been used to compress all the file within this collection, is available from various sites around the globe, e.g.: ASIA: ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp, utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp:/ftpsync/prep, cair-archive.kaist.ac.kr:/pub/gnu, ftp.nectec.or.th:/pub/mirrors/gnu AUSTRALIA: archie.au:/gnu (archie.oz or archie.oz.au for ACSnet) AFRICA: ftp.sun.ac.za:/pub/gnu MIDDLE-EAST: ftp.technion.ac.il:/pub/unsupported/gnu EUROPE: irisa.irisa.fr:/pub/gnu, ftp.univ-lyon1.fr:pub/gnu, ftp.mcc.ac.uk, unix.hensa.ac.uk:/mirrors/uunet/systems/gnu, src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/gnu, ftp.ieunet.ie:pub/gnu, ftp.eunet.ch, nic.switch.ch:/mirror/gnu, ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:/pub/gnu, ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de, ftp.win.tue.nl:/pub/gnu, ftp.etsimo.uniovi.es:/pub/gnu ftp.funet.fi:/pub/gnu, ftp.denet.dk, ftp.stacken.kth.se, isy.liu.se, ftp.luth.se:/pub/unix/gnu, ftp.sunet.se:/pub/gnu, archive.eu.net SOUTH AMERICA: ftp.inf.utfsm.cl:/pub/gnu, ftp.unicamp.br:/pub/gnu WESTERN CANADA: ftp.cs.ubc.ca:/mirror2/gnu USA: wuarchive.wustl.edu:/systems/gnu, labrea.stanford.edu, ftp.digex.net:/pub/gnu, ftp.kpc.com:/pub/mirror/gnu, f.ms.uky.edu:/pub3/gnu, jaguar.utah.edu:/gnustuff, ftp.hawaii.edu:/mirrors/gnu, uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu:/pub/gnu, ftp.cs.columbia.edu:/archives/gnu/prep, col.hp.com:/mirrors/gnu, gatekeeper.dec.com:/pub/GNU, ftp.uu.net:/systems/gnu -= * =-