libwww 2.0-alpha --- www and httpd available.

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Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 15:53:15 +0100
From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Message-id: <9303101453.AA07093@www3.cern.ch>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: libwww 2.0-alpha  --- www and httpd available.
Reply-To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch

For developers:

I have put new 2.0-alpha compatible line mode browser and daemon  
sources into the same ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/dev directory as
the library so you can see how it works.  Yes, I know there
is lots of conceptal design which is not documented, but if you
have used the old library this should be much easier.  Documentation  
will come ...  I would like priority feedback on whether features
or documentation are preferred!

Some features of the new library are

- registration system for format-converting modules
- registration of external programs for
   presenting new types of object
- registration of protocol modules
- registration of filename suffix <-> content-type mapping

These registration routines exist, and a default initialisation files  
exists, initialisation will be done from config files, etc etc.
but you can add your own init module.

- HTML genereration as well as parsing
- Same module used by daemon and browser for looking at directories
- Ability to write files back in a protocol-independent manner

The www will for example (if DISPLAY is defined) run xv to view
jpeg and gif files, ghostview on postscript etc.  There is an  
embryonic test dataset in  
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Test/Overview.html
of things to test in the new protocol.

The current daemon will return a MIME format message if it gets a new
style request.  It will not (yet) be intelligent about which format  
to send back.  But the client provides all it needs to know.

Tim