2.0 alpha testers?

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Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 18:34:54 +0100
From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Message-id: <9303151734.AA00815@www3.cern.ch>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: 2.0 alpha testers?
Reply-To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch

I would like brave alpha testers of the 2.0 www code, in particular  
of the multimedia bits.

The 2.0 libwww, line mode client and the server are on
ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/src now.   The library will handle  
multiple types of the same document when resolving links to
imaginary files called xxx.multi -- it will return xxx.ps or xxx.txt  
or xxx.gif depending on what the client can handle.

The bug in the server release that it didn't contain and code is  
fixed!

The tables of suffixes are in the c code (*Init.c) for now.
Note they can be quite different on client and server. See  
HTFormat.h, HTFile.h for routines to add configuation info
from your specific app code.

The current tables excpet ghostview and xv to be available
if DISPLAY is defined (for X) or the usual plethora of
image-handling apps on the NeXT [RIP].

Servers:  Note the rule file must now translate from a string
starting without protocol or nodename (as transferred in HTTP)
into a URI -- that is, you have to put file: onto the front
of all the filenames like:

#	HTTPD config file
#
map 	/	     /hypertext/WWW/LineMode/Defaults/cern.html
map 	/hypertext/* file://www3/Net/dxcern/userd/timbl/hypertext/*
pass	file://www3/Net/dxcern/userd/timbl/hypertext/*
fail 	*

You may see the implicatioon of this that you can map into
other spaces, and yes, that is right -- like you can map bits of
your http space into news of ftp or gopher or whatever. In other
words, the server works as a gateway to everything the client can
handle.  (Note gatewaying news: is not strictly legal I think)

This means you turn virtually anything into HTML.  But I haven't got
www command line options fixed up yet.

Directory listings are not sorted yet, but they do get README
put in (not for FTP directories, but for local ones).  As the
server and client code are the same, you can use a www client as
a directory browser.

Please let me know if you take this code and try it.  The important
thing is for client developers to check out the interfaces.

Tim