[ This file modified from "Adninistrator_Notes", by

	John Norstad
	Academic Computing and Network Services
	Northwestern University
	j-norstad@nwu.edu 

 distributed with the Mac Ph client, from which many aspects of xph
 were modelled. ]

14Apr92, bcs


Administrator Notes
===================

This section is for Ph server administrators at other sites who are
interested in supporting the X Ph client at their site.  It describes
in detail the characteristics of the Ph server expected by the X
client, and presents other information of interest to administrators.

Required Fields
---------------

The following fields must be present on the server database.  The
field names must be spelled exactly as shown, including case:

   alias = record alias.
   name = the person's full name.
   email = email address.
   password = record password.
   type = record type.
   hero = non-empty if the user is a hero.
   text = miscellaneous text.
   
The alias and name fields must be indexed and have the "Lookup"
attribute.  The password field must be encrypted.

The alias field must be unique.  The X Ph client cannot be used to
open or edit records with empty alias fields, although you can display
such records via queries.
   
Server Site Info
----------------

In several contexts, Ph presents a popup menu listing all of the known 
sites running the Ph server system.  The site information is obtained 
from the default server database via the following query:

   query ns-servers type=serverlist return text
   
The server database must contain at least one record with name 
"ns-servers" and type "serverlist".  The text fields of these records 
contain information for each known Ph server, in the following format:

   site:Site name.
   server:Ph server host domain name.
   domain:Alias-based email domain name, if any.
   
For example:

   site:Northwestern University
   server:ns.nwu.edu
   domain:nwu.edu
   
If a site does not support alias-based email, the "domain" line should be
omitted.

The best way to get the most up-to-date site list is to query the NU 
server at ns.nwu.edu and get a copy of our ns-servers record.

For the best appearance of the popup menu, we recommend listing your 
local server first, then all the other servers in alphabetical order.
The X client will connect to the first site listed in this list if the
list is available.

The domain information is used to reformat the email field in query 
replies.  If the queried server supports alias-based email, the email 
field is reformatted as follows:

   email: alias@domain
        : (actual email address from database record)

If the queried server does not support alias-based email, the email 
field is not reformatted.

If the query for the site information fails, Ph does not present the
popup menu and uses the default server and site name specified in the
application default file.

If you implement a Ph server at your site, please let folks know so you can 
be added to the ns-servers list.  Send mail to ph-admin@nwu.edu.

The Help Menu
-------------

Ph expects to find the help text for the Help menu under the subtopic 
"xph".  You should create a subdirectory of your server Help directory 
named "xph" and install all your X Ph help files in that 
subdirectory.

Each help file should have the same name as the corresponding Help menu 
command, with underscores (_) substituted for space characters.  For
example, the file name for the help text you are reading now is:

   .../Help/xph/4b..Adminstrator_Notes
   
If a help text file name contains the substring "..", Ph only displays
the part of the file name which follows the first such substring in the
Help menu.

For example, the Help menu title for the help text you are reading now is
simply "Administrator Notes", without the "4b.." part.

Administrators should use the characters preceeding the ".." to sort the
help topics into the order in which they want them to appear in the Help
menu.  Ph sorts the topics alphabetically.

On our UF server, the help topics are simply a text-only version of our
printed document "Ph - An Electronic Campus Directory System." We use 
the ".." trick on our server to make the topic titles in the Help menu
appear in the same order as the corresponding chapters and sections in 
the printed document.
   
The first time a user runs Ph (no "Ph Prefs" file found), Ph sends the
following command to the default Ph server to build the Help menu topic 
list:

   help xph
   

If the "help xph" command returns an empty topic list, no help menu is built.

On our UF server, we don't use the "native" help topic feature of the Ph
server.  Our Help/native subdirectory is empty.  Our Help/ph subdirectory
contains all the help files for the UNIX client.  Our Help/xph 
subdirectory contains all the help files for the X client.  Many of the 
files in the Help/xph subdirectory are soft links to files in the 
Help/ph subdirectory.

Ph does not include any help topics whose names are numbers.  This 
eliminates native server error number help topics, which are are 
irrelevant to users of the X client.
   

Distribution
------------

Most of the parts of our UF Ph system are available via anonymous FTP to
eng.ufl.edu, in the directory pub/ph.  In this directory you will
find the X Ph client with source code, our modified UNIX Ph client with
source code (a slightly modified version of the NWU/UIUC UNIX client with
Emacs-like line editing and command recall and csh-like history expansion),
and various other clients and information.

Other Ph sites are welcome to use these materials in any way they see
fit.  All we ask is that you give appropriate credit to the University
of Florida in your documentation.


