#LAW DICT. on CD?
17 messages in this thread
Are There Law Dictionaries /Ref. Works On CD-ROM ? Thanks Ed
Get a catalog from CDROM, Inc they have quite a list of available CD
titles. Also several other vendors in this forum have files that you can
download from the library that contains their list of available CD-ROM
discs.
Ed-
At Micro Design, we support CDs under AIX, DOS, Novell 386, OS/2 and
UNIX. Therefore, we have a lot of people send in CDs for testing to make
sure that it will work under their environment. The only CD that I have
ever come across that had to do with law was CD LAW: New Hampshire Case Law
my Metatec Discovery Systems
But a catalog is still your best bet. Good luck.
Do you support the rock ridge extensions under UNIX?
Albert –
I have never heard of the Ridge Rock Extensions. If you could give me
an idea of their function, then I might be able to give an intelligent
answer. When going into a DOS emulator, such as VP/ix, the user simply maps
a drive letter to the mount point under UNIX, e.g. /cdrom. If this
extensions works with a drive letter, then it may work. If it is expecting
anything like a device driver, then it won't. -> Eric
Rock Ridge extensions sit on top of ISO-9660 and give you all the special
things UNIX offers, deep directories, attributes, symbolic-links, long
filenames, non ISO-9660 character sets, directory relocation. I uploaded a
file on the Rock Ridge spec you can search for it using the keyword RRIP or
ROCK RIDGE
The protocol is free too. The best part is you can still you a Rock (oops
should be read rather than you ) ridge disc on any platform that can handle
ISO-9660.
Rock Ridge is being supported by many of the UNIX vendors like SUN as a
standard feature at the operating system level. It is a great standard
that proves you can still use ISO-9660 as a base and still have extensions
that can handle any type of filesystem in the future.
I recently looked at some CD-ROMs of developer material for a Personal
Iris. The disk was not ISO-9660 or High Sierra because a Mac couldn't
recognize it. Is there a certain format apart from ISO that some Unix
vendors use? Do you know in particular what sort of format used on Silicon
Graphics machines?
In the early days and still on many UNIX systems that don't have Rock Ridge
drivers they use a scheme that works very well. Take the hard disk and
dump it to a CD-ROM. So all you are looking at is a SGI hard disk. I have
a SUN disc which was the just a hard disk too. So it is very common method
… since MAC HFS CD-ROMs are just hard disks too. So being a hard disk it
is "proprietary" filesystem one could say and not a standard.
Hmm. That would have been my first guess. So if someone could write a
driver for the Unix filesystem, they'd be able to read these discs.
Not exactly. If the CD-ROM is just dumping the hard disk to CD-ROM then
you would have to call the company (SUN for example) and ask them how they
have their filesystem layed out. Everyone with a proprietary UNIX CD-ROM
has similiar filesystems but just different enough to make it quite a bit
of work to make them all work.
This is why the Rock Ridge extensions are so good. It takes the
proprietary fileystems and converts it to ISO-9660 but it retains all the
important information for the filesystem. Hopefully Rock Ridge will become
part of the ISO standard in the future. The Amiga comes to mind in that it
has a unix-like filesystem so Rock Ridge would be good for it too.
The best part about Rock Ridge is that it is still ISO-9660 compliant. So
you can still read the files under ISO-9660 on any machine without any
problem. This allows one to share the same CD-ROM across many platforms
and not loose the flavor of the original UNIX or unix-like filesystem.
Yes, I wish the Amigoids would have known about Rock Ridge. I wrote some of
the ground-breaking CD-ROM articles in AmigaWorld magazine, and when I
asked some of the software driver developers about Rock Ridge, they said
"huh?". Instead, some Amiga-specific CD-ROMs are simply ISO but with
filenames that apparently violate the spec, in mixed-case letters, and they
"violate" the notion that the filenames aren't MS-DOS compatible. Or does
ISO-9660 allow filenames longer than DOS? I dunno, I haven't memorized the
specs.
Eric,
Thank you for the mention, but CD/LAW, is _not_ published by
Metatec. It's published by CD/LAW Inc. (us) (603)446-7979, right here in
bustling Marlow New Hampshire. Metatec did master and press the first issue
for us, but we have since dealt with other companies for that as well.
We're up to issue 4, and beside case law (back to 1913) we have
statutes, city ordinances and adminstrative regulations on the disk as
well.
We are aware of several similar disks for other states, (tell us
which on you're interested in) all put out by small companies. There are
rumors of the large companies coming out RSN, but we've yet to see a real
disk.
Frank
Frank,
Do you have/are you aware of anything for Texas and Federal case law?
Especially Personal Injury stuff? My father-in-law does a TON of case work
in P.I. and is constantly threatening to get a Westlaw hookup (which will
clean his clock!). Just curious. TIA.
Toby
You might try the Law forum and see if they have any additional information
too. (GO LAWSIG)
Albert,
Thanks!
Toby
Toby,
There is a product called Hyperlaw which has Supreme Court slip
oninions: 1-800-825-6521. They should be putting out an update any week
now.
We have heard that Texas is published by Matthew Bender (one of the
biggies), but haven't seen anything.
We have also been hearing within the last week or so that West
Publishing (the biggest) is coming out with CDROMS, at least for the big
states, within 90 days. Again, this is grapevine stuff–people who have
been waiting for one of the big publishers calling us after they hear from
West that New Hampshire will not be available in the immediate future.
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful: If you'd asked for Arkansas I
could have given you a phone number <g>.
Frank
Frank,
Well, I appreciate the info regardless! <g> I'll watch for West and
check on Bender. My father-in-law has a severe case of computer phobia and
resists all attempts at making things easier via computers. He thinks his
time is better spent going down to the law library rather than having
search tools attached to his PC. <sigh> Again, thanks for the info. B-))
Toby