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- >>>>> On Mon, 11 Nov 91 02:22:35 -0500, Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com> said:
-
- Ed> I'm slowly but surely converting the files on ftp.cs.toronto.edu:/pub/emv
- Ed> to be in the WWW format. Right now the stuff in news-archives.README is
- Ed> referred to that way, and some of the rest of the things in news-archives too.
-
- I just tried to read your news-archives.README with the line-mode
- browser through the traditional file: access. First-minute comments :
-
- - Currently, any file retrieved through the file: access, local or
- remote, is considered a plain text file unless its name ends with
- `.html'. As a consequence, the anchors that you have inserted in
- news-archives.README are not interpreted by the browser, so they
- cannot be jumped to, except by cutting the reference and pasting it to
- another www command line. Moreover, the text is just echoed in its
- original format, which sadly happens to be double-spaced (CR-LF ?).
- The easy fix is to append `.html' to the name of any file that
- contains HTML tags, but I understand that it will bother people who
- look at your files without www. The upcoming format negociation could
- help with this, especially in the case of a dedicated www server that
- could pass and possibly negotiate the document type. For anonymous
- ftp, the browser should run simple heuristics to try and guess the
- type of the file from its name.extension. We'll think about it.
-
- Ed> This aftp: tag is new. I'm not completely happy with the use of
- Ed> the file: tag to refer to remote files, since it can lead to
- Ed> situations where references are ambiguous depending on whether
- Ed> you're dealing with a file on the local system or that same file
- Ed> accessed via anonymous FTP on the local system. Adding an aftp:
- Ed> tag should help that.
-
- - We agree that the current syntax can be ambiguous, but we want to
- keep references to local and remote files in the same format, because
- the very notion of a `remote' file should disappear with wide-area
- hypertext (remember the new WAN cliche: the network IS the computer).
- A less philosophical reason for that is to avoid referring to a
- particular retrieval protocol : the reference to the file should be
- the same regardless of whether it is retrieved through anonymous ftp
- or through the Andrew file system, for instance. Of course, we would
- like to introduce X.500 naming in the (more or less) long term.
-
- Ed> It's useful (even necessary) to include the anonymous@ bit; there are some
- Ed> sites (lib.stat.cmu.edu and research.att.com) with two parallel
- Ed> "anonymous FTP" trees that have different user names to get to them;
- Ed> a reference to
- Ed> <a href=aftp://netlib@research.att.com:/> </a>
- Ed> is quite different than
- Ed> <a href=aftp://anonymous@research.att.com:/> </a>
-
- So we want to keep `file:' for both local and remote file, but we must
- take into account your other suggestion : allowing for a different
- user name. I suggest the following :
-
- * allow an optional `user@' part before a host name.
- * if the user is not specified, make it the current user name
- if the host is the local machine, and `anonymous' otherwise.
- (this avoids the ambiguity that you mentioned)
-
- Examples :
- file://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/emv/news-archives.README.html
- file://netlib@research.att.com/
-
- Ed> The format //user@host:/filename/ is quite similar to that used by
- Ed> ange-ftp, so these references are immediately quite usable by
- Ed> existing code.
-
- - Currently, a colon after the host name is used to specify an alternate
- TCP port number, but a good browser should ignore it if no number is
- present. In this way, www can be compatible with ange-ftp syntax.
-
- - Your examples make me think of another feature we should add for the
- browsers to support them : the ability to display a directory as a
- list of references, with maybe the README file (if any) prepended as
- introductory text. Currently, on your reference to
- file://pit-manager.mit.edu/pub/usenet/
- the browser would try to `get' the directory through ftp and fail. So
- I'll add this to the wish-list for the `file:' access method :
-
- * if the address ends with a `/', try `ls' instead of `get'.
- * try to get an appropriate README file. Try those in order :
- README.html, *README*.html, README, *README*, *readme*
- * Display that file if found, then build a list of references
- for all the files contained in the directory.
-
- Note that if you supply both a README.html and a traditional README,
- you won't have to apologize about `all those funky angle brackets' !
-
- - From your news-archives.README :
-
- blah blah blah. Check out
- <a href=aftp://anonymous@pit-manager.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/> </a>
- for lots more information.
-
- With the line-mode browser, this will look fine :
-
- blah blah blah. Check out [1] for lots more information.
-
- But with any mouse-driven browser (NeXT, X-Windows, emacs, Mac), the
- anchor should sit on a piece of text that will serve as a button. With
- your current example, your reader would only see :
-
- blah blah blah. Check out for lots more information.
-
- with possibly a tiny highlighted space between `out' and `for'. Some
- human-readable description of what the anchor points to will do fine.
- For instance :
-
- blah blah blah. Check out the
- <a href=file://pit-manager.mit.edu/pub/usenet/> MIT usenet archives
- </a> for lots more information.
-
- would yield
-
- Check out the MIT usenet archives[1] for lots more information.
-
- or a highlighted `MIT usenet archives' on a mouse-driven browser.
- Before that in your README, it would be nice to have an anchor
- associated with the `List of periodic informational postings' and to
- the archive that you mention. Same for the `news.answers' group (the
- `news:' access is implemented in the new architecture. Use this simple
- syntax : `<a href=news:news.answers> news.answers </a>'.)
-
- - As an aside, the `name=' part of the anchor tag is not necessary in
- your context : it is needed if someone wants to make a link TO that
- particular anchor, not to the whole document.
-
- Ed> I'm also using
- Ed> <a href=wais://wais.domain.org:210/database?>
- Ed> in anticipation of that tag being supported, it should be a matter of
- Ed> a simple sed or perl script to convert those tags to their current
- Ed> preferred format.
-
- - Agreed. OK for the `wais:' access.
-
- Thank you for all your suggestions. Please continue to provide
- feedback as you write more html. We're looking forward to read your
- data seamlessly and pave the way for other ftp site managers.
-
- --- Jean-Francois
-
-