TEK for Windows: Release Notes

Thank you for trying out an Alpha release of the TEK Search Engine, Version 1.3! TEK - which stands for Time Equals Knowledge - is a low-bandwidth information delivery system that allows access to the World Wide Web using only email. The system is designed for low-connectivity communities where continuous Internet access is unavailable or is too expensive for everyday use.

This package contains the TEK Client, which provides a graphical user interface that runs inside a standard web browser. In order to retrieve web pages, the Client interacts via email with the TEK Server, which is currently based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon receiving an email from the Client, the Server retrieves candidate pages from the Internet, selects a representative subset that the Client does not already have, and sends them back to the user in an email attachment. After receiving this email and opening the attachment, the user can then view the results of his search using the TEK Client.

More information about the TEK system is available from the TEK home page at http://tek.sourceforge.net/.

Contents of this file

1. System requirements
2. Installation instructions
3. Getting started with TEK
4. Intended usage scenario
5. How to uninstall
6. Troubleshooting
7. Reporting Bugs
8. Helping with TEK
9. Change log

1. Download the installer from http://tek.sourceforge.net/. If you do not have Java 1.3.1 (or later) installed on your system (or if you are not sure), then select the "Includes Java VM" option from the download page. Or, if you received TEK on CD, find the installer under the "windows" directory on the CD.
   
   
2. Run the installer, and follow its directions.
   
   

1. Start the TEK Client from the Start Menu. It should be under Start / Programs / TEK Client / TEK Client.
   
   
2. A web browser should open (it is installed on the first execution of TEK). This should bring up a registration page. You can also open the web browser manually from Start / Programs / TEK Client / Firefox CE TEK.
   
   
3. Complete the registration process according to the instructions on the page. The TEK Client will send a registration email to the TEK Server so that the Server knows where to send search results.
   
   
4. Check your email account for a reply from the TEK Server, which will confirm your registration. Open the attachment to the email (using the default application for opening), and the TEK Client will process it automatically. (If you have trouble with this step, see the troubleshooting section below.)
   
   
5. Go back to your web browser and visit "http://tek/". At this point you should find the main menu for TEK.
   
   
6. From the main menu, click on "Create new query" to enqueue a search request. The first time you visit this page, you will have to create a "new user" account. Then you can login, enter search terms, and confirm the search. Then return to the main menu.
   
   
7. To send your active queries to the TEK Server, follow the "Send Pending Queries" link from the Main Menu. This will prompt you to connect to the Internet, after which an email will be sent to the TEK Server.
   
   
8. Check your email account for a reply from the TEK Server. Open the attachment (with the default application) so that the TEK Client will process it.
   
   
9. Return to the main menu at "http://tek/", and click on "View results". After logging in, you should be able to see the results of your query.
   
   
10. Subsequently, you can search through all of your results using the "Search locally" option from the main menu.

The current version of TEK sends email by direct communication with the administrator's SMTP server, and it receives email through attachments that are sent to the administrator's account. However, the system is flexible regarding this transport mechanism, and we are open to other methods. For example, we might prefer to send email on disk via the postal mail in remote communities.

How to Uninstall

• Receiving mail. We have found that with certain configurations of Windows and with certain mail readers on Linux, the attachments from the TEK Server are not processed correctly. If you receive a reply from the server and click on the attachment, but still get the registration page when you visit "http://tek", then you are experiencing a problem.

  There is an easy way to get around this problem. Instead of opening the attachment from the TEK Server, save the attachment to disk in the directory where the TEK Client expects to find it. On Windows, this directory is something like:

  C:\Program Files\TEK Client\tek\incoming

  On Linux, this directory is tek/incoming. If you save the attachment there (with any filename), the TEK Client will process it automatically.

• Sending mail. TEK supports most forms of SMTP for sending mail, including username/password authentication. However, for mail servers with unusual authentication protocols, it might not be able to send mail automatically. This might result in an error trying to send the registration mail, or in a silent failure in which the mail is never sent.

  If you experience this problem, you can send TEK mails manually using your favorite email program. Just send an email to tekserv@cag.lcs.mit.edu, and attach the following file on your disk:

  C:\Program Files\TEK Client\tek\outgoing

  The exact location of the file might be different on your system, depending on where you installed TEK (if you are using Linux, it is under the tek/outgoing directory). Be sure to delete the file after sending it, so as to avoid making duplicate queries.

If you are still experiencing difficulty, or if you are having other problems using TEK, please contact us at tekbug@mit.edu.

Reporting Bugs

If you encounter a bug, please send it to us at tekbug@mit.edu so that we can incorporate it into our list and give you credit for discovering it. If possible, please include with each bug report the version of your operating system, web browser, and email program, along with the sequence of steps necessary to reproduce the bug.

Helping with TEK