MacWorld 1997 February/Macworld (1997-02).dmg/Shareware World/Info/tidbits-355.etx

Text File | 1996-12-08 | 30KB | 586 lines

TidBITS#355/25-Nov-96
=====================

  We rev up this issue with a request for holiday gift suggestions,
  an important note for AOL users, and a quick look at new Internet
  software from Microsoft. Also in this issue, Adam examines the
  state of the Web server market (with a focus on personal Web
  servers) and Matt Deatherage gives us a detailed examination and
  analysis of Apple's Meta-Content Format, or MCF, a new way of
  organizing and viewing information.

Topics:
    MailBITS/25-Nov-96
    WebBITS/25-Nov-96
    HotSauce and Meta Content Format

<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-355.html>
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Copyright 1996 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
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* Aladdin Systems -- 408/761-6200 -- <http://www.aladdinsys.com/>
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MailBITS/25-Nov-96
------------------
  We'd like to congratulate ShrinkWrap programmer Chad Magendanz
  <[e-mail]> and his wife Galen on the ahead-of-schedule
  release of their first non-software product - Quinn Pierce
  Magendanz. Rumor has it that Chad has already purchased a copy of
  My First C Compiler (see TidBITS-321_), so the mononymous Quinn of
  Internet Config fame may soon have company in the Macintosh
  programming pantheon. [ACE]


**Got a Holiday Gift Suggestion?** We at TidBITS love the holiday
  season, even with the capitalist feeding frenzy that it has
  become. If you're interested in participating in one of our
  holiday traditions, send one paragraph descriptions of your
  favorite computer-related gift ideas (for giving or receiving) to
  me at <[e-mail]> before 02-Dec-96. We'll edit them into an
  article for either TidBITS-357_ or TidBITS-358_, and we'll even
  see if we can wrangle some special deals for you. [ACE]


**AOL Pricing Shenanigans** -- AOL has managed to get itself in
  hot water with its new pricing plan, which takes effect 01-Dec-96.
  The new plan offers unlimited AOL service (including Internet
  access) for $19.95 per month - not a bad deal for some users. But
  what AOL only mentioned in the fine print, tucked away in a
  special forum, is that AOL intends to convert **all** existing
  accounts over to this new plan unless a subscriber specifically
  selects a different option. In other words, unless you tell AOL
  you don't want the new pricing plan, you'll automatically be
  billed for it. For typical AOL users, this means a fee increase of
  $10 per month.

  A group of state attorney generals have been examining AOL's
  actions, and last week Washington State Attorney General Christine
  Gregoire announced a letter of agreement with AOL under which AOL
  will have to inform customers actively of the pricing change
  before they can access AOL services. Customers will have until
  31-Mar-97 to make a positive assent to the new pricing plan, and
  subscribers who don't access AOL before the 01-Dec-96 deadline
  will be credited the difference between the new pricing plan and
  their previous subscription option. Still, the bottom line is that
  AOL is changing its rates effective 01-Dec-96, and if you have an
  AOL account, your rates will probably go up unless you intervene.
  [GD]


**Microsoft Internet Updates** -- Microsoft recently released two
  new Mac Internet programs: Internet Mail and News 1.0 and the
  first beta of Internet Explorer 3.0. Internet Mail and News, a
  separate application (based in part on John Norstad's NewsWatcher
  and Marco Piovanelli's WASTE text engine), replaces the email and
  Usenet news functionality in Internet Explorer. Although its
  interface barely departs from its Windows cousin and is no
  competition for mature programs like Eudora, Internet Mail and
  News is speedy and offers reasonable functionality, including a
  subject filter for newsgroups, drag & drop text editing, and
  easily-organized mail folders. The download is about 800K.

<http://www.microsoft.com/ie/launch/imn.htm>
<http://www.microsoft.com/ie/download/ieadd.htm>

  Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh 3.0b1 still lives in a
  relatively svelte 4 MB memory partition (although it hungrily
  consumes temporary memory in the system), and offers configurable
  toolbars, built-in video, audio, plus support for HTML 3.2 style
  sheets, Netscape plug-ins, and VRML (with QuickDraw 3D). Internet
  Explorer 3.0b1 also supports Java, using either Apple's MacOS
  Runtime for Java or (soon) the Microsoft Java VM developed jointly
  with Metrowerks (although using Java consumes another 4 MB of
  system memory). So far, reports of the beta's performance and
  behavior have varied widely. The download is about 5 MB. [GD]

<http://www.microsoft.com/ie/mac/>


WebBITS/25-Nov-96
-----------------
  by Adam C. Engst <[e-mail]>

  The press releases have been flying fast and furious in the
  Macintosh Web world of late, mostly on the server side of things.
  But, lest you think Web servers aren't for mere mortals, read on
  for news of how you might find yourself running one in the not-so-
  far future.


**WebSTAR 2.0 Appears** -- The main news for the week was the
  release of StarNine's WebSTAR 2.0, the leading Web server in the
  Macintosh market. StarNine has improved WebSTAR 2.0 in three
  primary ways: speed, security, and new technologies.

<http://www.starnine.com/webstar/webstar.html>

  Speed increases of two to three times in the already-sprightly
  WebSTAR come from two new caching methods. For those unfamiliar
  with caching, it's a way of storing information in RAM or in such
  a way that subsequent accesses are significantly faster than the
  initial access. WebSTAR 2.0 includes "smart" data caching, which
  means the program continually monitors which files are being
  accessed and decides which files will benefit the most from being
  cached. Other Web servers have provided a manual interface to
  caching, but they require the webmaster to maintain the list of
  cached files on a continual basis. Equally as important as data
  caching is WebSTAR's new file information caching scheme. One of
  the main bottlenecks for Mac servers is the slow Macintosh file
  system, and by caching file information in RAM, WebSTAR avoids the
  file system entirely. Overhead on the file info caching is
  reportedly only 500 bytes per file, so with reasonably-sized
  sites, it's not a huge RAM hog either.

  Security improvements in WebSTAR 2.0 come from the inclusion of
  WebSTAR/SSL with the basic WebSTAR package, and two additional
  security measures. In the past, you could restrict access to an
  entire site by IP number, but you could restrict folder access
  only by a username and password. WebSTAR 2.0 enables you to
  restrict folder access by IP number, falling back to username and
  password if someone hits an intranet site from their personal ISP,
  for instance. Another previous security concern was that WebSTAR
  would execute CGIs stored anywhere in the WebSTAR hierarchy.
  Someone could upload a Trojan horse CGI and execute it from any
  Web browser. Now, WebSTAR 2.0 only executes CGIs stored in a
  specific folder, which can be locked down through normal security
  means. Finally, WebSTAR's username/password database now supports
  tens of thousands of users.

  In terms of new technologies, WebSTAR 2.0 now includes a Java
  virtual machine, so programmers can write CGIs and plug-ins in
  Java. Although performance isn't as good as a CGI or plug-in
  written in C, development time can be shorter and take advantage
  of Java expertise. Concerns about the stability and performance of
  Java programs are significantly reduced because WebSTAR's virtual
  machine doesn't deal with interface at all - Java-based CGIs and
  plug-ins are purely for processing data at the server level.

  The new version sports a standard "server-side includes" feature
  that enables Web page authors to embed special tags in HTML
  documents to create dynamic pages. Although numerous products like
  NetCloak and CometPage already exist for this purpose, WebSTAR's
  server-side include feature can call other CGIs or plug-ins and is
  extensible with user-created tags.

  Speaking of plug-ins, StarNine is bundling a few important plug-
  ins with WebSTAR 2.0 (some of the features listed above are
  implemented through plug-ins as well). Most useful among them in
  my mind is one that "rolls" log files, copying the file to a new
  location and resetting the main log. Webmasters will appreciate a
  remote administration plug-in that sports a Star Trek-style
  interface, and another plug-in that sends email from the server
  rather than from a Web browser.

  Upgrades cost $149 for corporate customers or $99 for education
  customers through 31-Dec-96. New copies remain priced at $499.

<http://store5.starnine.com/upgrade/upgrade.html>


**Hanging with MultiHomie** -- Another improvement in WebSTAR 2.0
  is access to the HTTP 1.1 Host header. The implications of this
  support is that third-party plug-ins can work with WebSTAR to
  provide more seamless multihoming. In the past, Open Door
  Networks' HomeDoor was the best solution for multihoming on the
  Macintosh, but the machine name that appeared in the user's Web
  browser wasn't the same as the name in the URL the user typed.
  MultiHomie, a $75 shareware plug-in from ClearInk (site licenses
  are available), doesn't share this problem and returns proper URLs
  to Web browsers that are sufficiently modern to send the Host
  header. For all those who have been complaining vociferously at
  the Mac's lack of true multi-homing, the combination of WebSTAR
  2.0 and MultiHomie is worth investigating.

<http://www.clearink.com/fun_stuff/plugins/multihomie/>


**Open Door Deals** -- In response to the release of WebSTAR 2.0,
  Open Door Networks announced special pricing (through 01-Mar-97)
  for anyone upgrading to WebSTAR 2.0. Prices on HomeDoor, LogDoor
  (a real-time log analysis application), and MailDoor (which adds
  multiple domain capabilities to Apple Internet Mail Server) have
  been lowered by $40 to $80. In addition, Open Door announced a new
  version of HomeDoor that would provide the transparent multihoming
  capabilities of MultiHomie in the first quarter of 1997.

<http://www.opendoor.com/wsupgrade.html>


**Microsoft Gets Personal** -- In a surprising move, Microsoft and
  ResNova announced that Microsoft has acquired ResNova's Web server
  products: the personal Web server WebForOne, and the full-featured
  Boulevard. In conjunction, five of ResNova's employees, including
  president Alex Hopmann and product manager Lauren Antonoff, have
  joined Microsoft's Internet Platform and Tools division in San
  Jose, and ResNova is seeking a buyer for its NovaServer bulletin
  board system.

<http://www.resnova.com/>

  Microsoft plans to release a beta version of WebForOne, renamed
  Personal Web Server. Personal Web Server will eventually be
  bundled with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Although this may seem
  unusual, it's a matter of parity, since Microsoft already has a
  free Windows 95 entrant, called Personal Web Server for Windows 95
  (Microsoft's naming creativity astounds!). Microsoft claims it has
  no plans to release a full-featured Web server for the Mac.

  I've been talking about personal Web servers for some time; with
  this move it looks as though competition in the category is
  heating up even more. Apple has contracted with Maxum Development,
  makers of the RushHour graphics Web server, to create a personal
  Web server to be included in the Mac OS, and StarNine has a beta
  of Personal WebSTAR, which is essentially a modernized version of
  Chuck Shotton's original MacHTTP. And of course, there are
  numerous other Web servers available for the Mac, including some,
  like Peter Lewis's $10 shareware NetPresenz and Chris Hawk's free
  Quid Pro Quo, that could be considered personal Web servers on the
  basis of price alone.

<http://www.maxum.com/>
<http://www.starnine.com/software/software.html>
<http://www.share.com/peterlewis/netpresenz/index.html>
<http://www.slaphappy.com/>

  I certainly hope the makers of these and other personal Web
  servers turn their attention to concerns specific to personal Web
  servers, such as dealing effectively with document translation
  and non-dedicated Internet connections (see TidBITS-316_ and
  TidBITS-318_). It's time to see some innovation and not merely
  more Web-hucksterism.


HotSauce and Meta-Content Format
--------------------------------
  by Matt Deatherage <[e-mail]>

  In nearly every recent important Apple executive speech, the
  Powers That Be have mentioned an Apple technology investigation
  initially referred to as Project X and now called HotSauce.
  HotSauce presents a three-dimensional fly-through of sets of data
  (like all the Web sites categorized by Yahoo, the Usenet newsgroup
  hierarchy, or similar hierarchical sets of data) that can be
  described through common themes.

  Apple had shown HotSauce before this year, but now the execs are
  mentioning HotSauce not just as a potential user-interface gizmo
  but also as an underlying technology that's going to revolutionize
  the way we browse data. What's the amazing part? Not the three-
  dimensional representation, or the Netscape Navigator plug-in to
  do it in a browser window, or even the programs that create the
  data files used by it. No, it's the format of the data files - a
  way of describing information _about_ data. Apple calls this
  format MCF, which is short for Meta-Content Format. In this
  article, I cut through the hype and look at whether MCF lives up
  to Apple's recent claims that it will do for databases what HTML
  did for text.


**Meta-content?** Many of us just got used to the idea that
  information businesses are now "content providers," and now we're
  being asked to understand "meta-content?" It sounds like a
  technogeek term from hell, but it's not so bad.

  The American Heritage Dictionary defines the prefix "meta-" in
  part as meaning "beyond, transcending, more comprehensive."
  Engineers like using the prefix to describe the process of
  referring to a process. For example, a joke about a joke would be
  "meta-humor," and a language invented to describe other languages
  is a "meta-language." (The concept is discussed thoroughly in the
  1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal
  Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter - a must-read for engineering
  or science enthusiasts.) Following this tradition, meta-content is
  content that talks about other content.

  MCF, as defined by Apple's R.V. Guha (who is responsible for both
  HotSauce and MCF) is a "language for representing a wide range of
  information _about_ content." A simple example of meta-content is
  the header on an email message. It tells you information _about_
  the message (who sent it, at what time, how it got to you, where
  replies should go, and more) but it's not the message itself: the
  person who sent you the mail wasn't sending you the header, but
  was sending the content of the message.


**Why Describe Content?** Email headers can be described as a
  simple _language_ for describing the content of an email message.
  A language, for these purposes, is a set of simple rules that
  define valid expressions - in the normal language of mathematics,
  for example, "4 + 4" is a valid expression but "76#&98+A!" isn't.
  Email would be less useful if there were no headers: any sender
  would have to be sure to include the header information in the
  body of the message or you, as recipient, would never see it. A
  lack of a signature would leave you clueless as to the message's
  origin (and a false signature could mislead you further).

  So, describing content is a useful pursuit. In fact, when you have
  lots and lots of content, navigating through it is next to
  impossible without some form of meta-content. Millions of people
  turn to Yahoo to find Web pages sorted into useful (if somewhat
  arbitrary) categories and classes. The same people could turn to
  AltaVista to search millions of Web pages by content, but
  searching by content is often less useful when you're browsing. If
  you want to find magazines about the Macintosh, you can dive
  through Yahoo until you get to a list of some 30 separate Web
  sites on the subject. Searching for "Macintosh magazine" in
  AltaVista returns about 400,000 matches, including job listings at
  Macworld, dozens of pages from the MacToday site, articles from
  old issues of Byte in Italian and so on. The raw text searching
  capability returns thousands of times more matches, but they're
  not as useful as Yahoo's more limited set.

<http://www.yahoo.com/>
<http://altavista.digital.com/>

  Once you have a good description of some kind of content, that
  meta-content can be effectively and efficiently searched with
  excellent results. The major problem is that - so far - good
  meta-content comes only from actual people. Technology is getting
  better at this - Apple demonstrated agents that distill text
  documents into one sentence at Macworld Boston - but humans can
  still do much better. Publishers often create library card catalog
  entries for books to assist librarians - without that help,
  libraries have no way of knowing a book's contents except by
  jacket blurbs or the table of contents, and it's rare to find a
  library with enough resources to hire a librarian just to read
  books and catalog them properly.

  In a similar vein, the trend in Web publishing is towards self-
  description of Web pages. Assuming you're honest, you can
  accurately describe your page in 25 words more accurately than
  someone at Yahoo, and much more accurately a text retrieval
  system. The HTML 3.2 standard includes a META keyword so you can
  add some meta-content information to your Web pages to assist with
  automatic indexing and other meta-content creation activities.

<http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Wilbur/>


**But Why MCF?** Individually generated pieces of meta-content are
  useful, but when you describe collections of hundreds of thousands
  of pieces of content, you must have some standards. Let's extend
  the example of a library card catalog to one that's being
  computerized. When you look at a book's card, you can easily see
  if the book has 27 authors (perhaps it's an anthology). If you
  enter that information into a database, though, if there are only
  three "author" fields, you're stuck - you either leave out 24
  authors or you enter them in an unrelated field, such as
  "description." Either way will foil people searching for books by
  one of those 24 people (who's going to search the description
  field for an author?). Large meta-content systems must be
  flexible; in fact, the MARC format used by the Library of Congress
  consists of a set of tagged data - you can have as many author
  tags and authors as you want for any particular entry, limited
  only by your particular computer's capability to store them.

<http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/>

  So why not use an existing format like MARC to describe content on
  the Web as well? MARC is not an open standard. The "tags" used to
  indicate what each given entry contains are in fact numbers; and
  numbers not published are reserved for the MARC committee's
  definition, with only some exceptions. Further, MARC records
  include binary data and aren't easily human-readable. Conversely,
  Guha's MCF format is more like HTML. Consider that in HTML, a Web
  page author can invent her own tags. If someone's browser doesn't
  know how to interpret them, they'll just be ignored. If a browser
  does interpret them, then the page can include nifty new features.
  Netscape does this with nearly every release of Navigator.

  Apple's hoping MCF has a similar reception - it's a simple, text-
  based format that defines objects and their properties. There are
  no restrictions on what properties are described for each object,
  nor are there requirements that all properties be described or
  that all relationships between objects be included. HotSauce's
  implementation of MCF only handles a few properties for each
  object: "parent" objects, "child" objects, suggested locations
  where the children might appear in the 3-D fly-by in relation to
  the parent objects, and that's just about it. You can get the
  white paper on MCF at the URL below.

<http://applenet.apple.com/hotsauce/text/mcf.html>

  Apple has submitted MCF to the Internet Engineering Task Force
  (IETF) for consideration as an Internet standard for describing
  content, and I'm unaware of any similar counter-proposals. If the
  IETF does accept MCF as a standard, we can presume there will be a
  set of standard attributes for describing data (common things like
  "name", or "URL"; maybe a "description", or "creator", or other
  similar tags), but extra data can still be included.


**What Will MCF Do For Us?** In case you're digesting all this
  with a resounding "Big deal!" building in the back of your throat,
  you have to realize that most standards are boring - it's what's
  done with them that's interesting.

  Think of HTML. The idea of marking up text with more text that
  indicates what the original text should look like is, well, a
  silly idea. It's not a compact way to indicate stylistic changes
  (a "bold" command can be expressed in less than one byte, rather
  than the lengthy <STRONG> tag), HTML source is not easy to read,
  and it's not suitable for advanced page descriptions.

  But, HTML is easy for computers to work with, it's extensible (as
  we've seen), and the simple hypertext capabilities that link a
  phrase on a page to a completely different page led to the Web
  browser, which led to today's World Wide Web, which has been noted
  to be a Really Big Deal.

  MCF has the same features - it's easy to create, easy to use, and
  easy for computers to work with it. For lack of a better term, I
  envision an MCF "browser" program that can navigate through any
  collection of MCF-described data. Apple's HotSauce Web site has
  several such MCF collections, called "X Spaces" because of the
  early Project X name. If you have Apple's Netscape plug-in for
  HotSauce, you can fly through any of these X Spaces in your Web
  browser.

<http://applenet.apple.com/hotsauce/>

  You can also download a stand-alone HotSauce application and view
  X Spaces that way. It includes a choice of viewing formats
  recently added to the plug-in - the 3-D fly-through method, or a
  two-dimensional Finder-like view with folders and disclosure
  triangles that reveal folder contents when clicked, just like the
  Finder's View by Name capability. Note that the MCF file
  describing the data didn't change; the program is just viewing it
  in a different way.

  There is the real key - a single way of describing a large set of
  data can be displayed in whatever fashion a programmer can invent.
  The current HotSauce visual interface isn't all that impressive in
  today's age of 3-D rendered graphics, but it's just a way of
  looking at MCF data - it would be relatively easy to create a
  different interface to the same data.

  If every Web site generated an MCF description of itself, you
  could fly-through any site and find the information most relevant
  to you, without using a site map (which may not be useful at all;
  some Web site maps are woefully inadequate), or search the site as
  if it's a Finder window. An MCF-viewing Live Object would add that
  capability to any OpenDoc container on your Macintosh.

  The same MCF browser or viewer part could take you through your
  own hard disk, through Yahoo's Web pages, through every Web site
  with an MCF description - even through a database that has an MCF
  description (imagine browsing huge databases as you could your own
  hard disk!) - through just about anything at all.

  That's why Apple executives say MCF will do for databases what
  HTML does for text. If it's adopted by the world at large, as an
  IETF standard or otherwise, they could be right.


**Competing Meta-Content Standards** -- There have been other
  efforts to create a standard description for content, but none has
  a company like Apple behind it. Further, Apple's MCF inventor,
  R.V. Guha, has built upon the work of committees investigating
  such possibilities, including the Dublin Core group that has a
  preliminary standard. MCF is in its early stages; though Dublin
  Core is a little bit more academically inclined and bears a
  resemblance to library cataloging structures, Guha's white paper
  says there's no reason why the benefits of Dublin Core can't be
  expressed in MCF with some work to define a syntax.

  What about Microsoft's Nashville project? Nashville is the code
  name for Microsoft's "Internet Add-On Pack," expected to come soon
  for Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms (apparently now also
  called "Active Desktop"). It's been described in the press as
  "building the browser into the operating system," and is supposed
  to include a way to let you view your hard disk as a Web page,
  complete with hyperlinks. It does exactly that, according to my
  research.

  What Nashville does _not_ do is describe both Web pages and hard
  disk contents in a meta-content format, then use an MCF-like
  technology to view both. Nashville replaces (or adds to) Windows'
  desktop program (their Finder, if you will) by sharing code with
  Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. If you move the discussion to
  more familiar Macintosh terms, then with Nashville, Web windows
  could open in the Finder without launching a separate browser
  program (just like sounds and clippings files), and you could even
  change your desktop to display live Web content instead of just
  file icons and Finder windows. You could also embed Finder-like
  panes into Web pages or documents.

  Microsoft does all this without a meta-content format by using an
  ActiveX control to display file and folder views inside Internet
  Explorer windows. The browser itself doesn't know anything about
  the hard disk; it just knows about ActiveX and has an ActiveX
  component knows about the hard disk. (In our earlier example,
  OpenDoc wouldn't know about MCF, but an MCF Live Object could give
  that functionality to every OpenDoc document.)

  Nashville's technology is nice. A future version of the Macintosh
  OS could go even further with OpenDoc because OpenDoc can embed
  any Live Object, where Nashville appears to embed only ActiveX
  controls inside Web browser windows or panes (you couldn't, as I
  read Microsoft's descriptions, have a large spreadsheet with some
  Web content embedded in it, but you could have a large Web page
  with spreadsheet content embedded in it).

  Nashville is likely to be available before IETF does serious work
  with MCF, but since the two are not competing standards, that
  shouldn't make any difference except in public perception.
  Microsoft hasn't come out against MCF, and if it takes off as it
  could, Microsoft will probably embrace MCF as quickly as any other
  Internet-savvy company.

  Access to data isn't a problem anymore, but finding _useful_ data
  is becoming extremely difficult with the proliferation of sources.
  MCF is a potential way to make the growing Internet a little more
  manageable, and I can see why Apple is excited about it.

  [This article is reprinted with permission from MDJ, a daily
  Macintosh publication covering news, products, and events in the
  Macintosh world. If you can't get enough insightful Mac news, sign
  up for a trial subscription to MDJ. For more information and the
  free MDJ Recap #1 in setext or Acrobat PDF format, visit the MDJ
  Web site at <http://www.gcsf.com/>.]


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