Essence is a resource discovery system based on customized information
extraction.  Essence can produce a compact, yet representative index
for large amounts of diverse information, then export the it via WAIS.

The Essence prototype is available via anonymous ftp from
ftp.cs.colorado.edu [128.138.243.151] in /pub/cs/distribs/essence.
It's written in Perl and C, and has been tested on SunOS 4.x systems.

The distribution includes the following files and directories:

	README 		This file
	COPYRIGHT	Copyright notice; please include in any redistributions
	ChangeLog	List of changes
	INSTALL 	Instructions on how to build and install Essence
	Makefile	Top-level Makefile
	WishList	List of future enhancements
	aftp-cs-colorado-edu.src
			The WAIS source file for the Essence interface
			to the Anonymous FTP file system at ftp.cs.colorado.edu
	doc/		Manual page for Essence, 1993 Winter USENIX paper, 
			and other information
	src/		Source code for Essence and its supporting tools

We would appreciate comments and suggestions about Essence.  When
reporting bugs, please include the version number (listed at the bottom
of this file).  Also, note that Essence selectively chooses "promising"
keywords for the indexes, based on knowledge of the semantics of
individual file types (e.g., extracting author, title, and abstract
from troff documents).  We would appreciate it if people try Essence
and suggest better ways to select keywords based on their experiences.

If you would like to be added to the essence-users list (for software
updates and other discussions, etc.), send an email message to
essence-users-request@cs.colorado.edu, with the body (not subject line)

    subscribe essence-users


The authors can be reached as follows:

	Darren R. Hardy
	Department of Computer Science
	University of Colorado
	Boulder, CO  80309-0430
	hardy@cs.colorado.edu

	Michael F. Schwartz
	Department of Computer Science
	University of Colorado
	Boulder, CO  80309-0430
	schwartz@cs.colorado.edu

Version Number: 	1.1
Version Date:		December 21, 1993
