The paper How to find the best approximation results - a follow-up to Garey and Johnson by Pierluigi Crescenzi and Viggo Kann
describes the background and future of the compendium, and how the
compendium was used 1998. The paper was published in December 1998
in ACM SIGACT News, volume 29, number 4, pages 90-97.
Up to Compendium.