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1994-10-26
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/*
* ArcWebK9Q
*
* © Kevin F. Quinn & Stewart Brodie, 1994
*
*
* This file: !ArcWebK9Q.!Help
*
*/
This is the !Help file for !ArcWebK9Q, a fetcher application for ArcWeb.
This fetcher handles URLs with the http: method from !TCPIP v2.01.
This application was written by ripping-off Stewart Brodie's ArcWebLcl
application, and modifying it to suit !TCPIP. I've included Stewart's
name in the © above as a lot of the standard application stuff is his.
However, if it all goes horribly wrong then it's probably my bits of
code, so blame me, don't blame Stewart!
This application is (very) Alpha and should not be trusted. Essentially,
it is best to wait for your email and news to complete before surfing the
Web as it is entirely possible that it could hang the machine - I certainly
don't trust it :-) There are whole swathes of code that probably haven't
been executed, let alone tested...
Having said that, it seems to work OK most of the time.
There are a few limits worth bearing in mind. One is that up to 64
requests may be made concurrently. I have written stuff to send an
appropriate HTML file back to ArcWeb informing it that a fetch was
discarded, but I haven't tested this bit (take that to read as
"probably doesn't work"). Secondly, there is a timeout of 60 minutes
on ArcWeb->KA9Q requests - if you supply a duff URL or a site is down,
trf doesn't respond, so I time out. This has the unfortunate effect
of also killing any requests that do take more than 60 minutes even if
they are working (e.g. large, distant requests).
The application uses a sub-directory off the !Scrap application to
store responses from "trf". This is because trf downloads to the
scrap directory, and renaming to a directory/file below this should
work as it shouldn't take up any more disc space. However, these
files accumulate at the moment because the expiry protocol of ArcWeb
hasn't been implemented yet (as of v0.09, anyway). Leaving these files
alone also means that the more determined user can still get at
downloaded images etc even if ArcWebK9Q/ArcWeb get confused trying to
display them. If you want to clear the files out, go ahead and do so,
but also run "!Wipe" found inside the !WebCache application supplied
with ArcWeb.
Note that ArcWeb 0.08 (as uploaded to ftp.demon.co.uk at the time of
writing) falls over with Demon's home page (amongst others). Version
0.09 cures this - to get this directly from Stewart's home page without
a working WWW browser :) type the following at the net> prompt in !TCPIP:
net> trf louis.ecs.soton.ac.uk 80 "GET /~snb94r/arcweb.arc"
After the modem lights stop flashing, you will find a file with a strange
filename in the !Scrap.ScrapDirs.ScrapDir, which is about 300K and of
type Data. Wait until the download is finished - if you can load it into
your editor then the download is complete, if the download hasn't finished
then you will get a "File Open" error. Settype the file to "archive" and
open it with SparkPlug or whatever. Drag the icons to your Internet
directory and away you go.
One other point - use "tcp hangup 0 0" to stop !TCPIP quitting underneath
your feet, and you can do "ping gate.demon.co.uk 60" to stop Demon
timing you out.
Kevin F. Quinn kevq@banana.demon.co.uk
26th October 1994