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Version 3.4 - 2003 May 8
Welcome - what is this CD About?
It is a CD for technical development info for the 3rd world -
Agriculture
Appropriate Technology (which also covers stuff in these other sectors)
Construction, Building, Civil Engineering
Electrical Trades and Electronics
Fisheries and Fish Farming
Food Processing and Storage
Post Harvest
Forestry
Health, Medicine
Metalworking Trades, including use of many machine tools
Miscellaneous other Subjects
Soil and Water Conservation
Veterinary Medicine, Animal Health
Water and Sanitation (WATSAN)
Woodwork, Carpentry, including use of many machine tools
Where does the info come from?
German, Swiss, UK, USA, UN and other Aid Programs, NGO's and other bodies worldwide.
Why this CD? Doesnt it just duplicate material from other sources?
A. VITA (Volunteers for International Technical Assistance of the USA) have a CD
which they issued in 1994, which covers about 190 subject areas, 4500 diagrams
and 13 megabytes of text. But it is in a propriety windows format -
textware lite, which is difficult to read and which may become obsolete.
Also it is unuseable by Unix, Mac, and Linux users.
B. Humaninfo NGO have many CD's which they have issued over the last 5+ years.
Their content is excellent and the searching capability is highly useable and
extremely fast, but:
1. A lot of 'hard' practical technical info is mixed in with 'soft'
subject areas
2. the CD's again use a proprietry windows format (Greenstone Digital Library) , which may at some
time become obsolete
3. their material is bundled up together and difficult to split up for
re-packaging
4. Various CD's contain a lot of the same core material, without any easy guide to tell
which is which
C. Other content providers (especially ITDG of UK) have a lot of
high quality material, but of which very little is available digitally.
This CD brings together:
A. The
VITA Material
remastered into HTML ISO 9660 format, with machine translation
into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German as well as the english original.
(Note that these translations are not on this version of the CD - for space reasons - but they
are available on request and/or on other CD releases...).
190 subjects,
13 megabytes text per language, 78 megabytes diagrams. VITAHTML - open system.
B. A lot of the same material as contained in the Humaninfo CD's is available
here as HTML ISO9660 format; this is 'hard' or 'non-soft'
technical information. 490 books or booklets; approximately 130 Meg of text plus 200 Meg Diagrams.
There are no machine translations yet into French, Spanish and Portuguese, but
that is planned for future - pls contact us to encourage, offer help, or request translation.
CD3WD - open system
An Approximate breakdown of the CD3WD info as in (B) above by sector is:
APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY - 22% by CD or Hard Drive Space
HEALTH - 22%
AGRICULTURE - 16%
CONSTRUCTION - 14%
FOOD PROCESSING - 9%
SOIL AND WATER - 6%
WATSAN (WATER AND SANITATION) - 5%
ELECTRICAL TRADES - 4%
METALWORKING TRADES - 3 %
WOODWORK - 3%
FISHERIES - 2%
FORESTRY - 2%
MISCELLANEOUS - 2%
VETERINARY - 1%
FAQs (Frequently asked questions)
Q - Will the CD run on Mac and Linux?
A - CD3WD_32 does not run on either Mac or Linux (despite what I had assumed earlier, and despite strong
efforts to make it run on both). CD3WD_33 runs on Windows (of course) and on Linux (tested 2004 May 3rd on Suse Linux
server successfully); it does not run on Mac Os10 - sorry - dont know why at the moment. Any
advice
on this
Mac problem will be welcomed....
27 September 2003
Mr Alex Weir
Harare, Zimbabwe Africa and London UK
alexweir1949@yahoo.com
http://www.cd3wd.com/