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1993-05-14
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CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Tim Berners-Lee/CERN
Minutes of the World Wide Web BOF (WWW)
Status
Tim Berners-Lee mentioned a few recent developments:
o NCSA's "Mosaic" WWW client for X11 agreed by the meeting to be the
best information access tool to date. This is at an advanced beta
state (version 0.12). FTP pickup rate for this product now exceeds
that for NCSA telnet.
o A Windows client for MS-DOS machines exists, the equivalent of
XMosaic but for PCs. It is user configurable and looks good. A
problem with release is that a runtime license is needed for the
TCP stack used (Distinct).
o The growth rate of access to the CERN server has continued to
double every four months for the last two years with no sign of
tapering off.
Man Pages on the Web
Steve Romig of Ohio State was congratulated on his server server for
unix manual pages. This is a good example of an automatic server (a
perl script in this case) which provides a powerful data access. Steve
agreed to make his tools available on the web.
Web Agenda
There was a discussion of things which should be done to make it easier
for the Web to spread. These include:
o Better packaging of CERN software, in particular the server:
simpler installation, irrelevant file hiding, etc.
o Licensing of CERN software: There was deep concern expressed that
investment by others in WWW related projects would be jeopardized
later by CERN's licensing conditions, in the way that the
University of Minnesota's have pulled the rug out from under the
Gopher project. The General Public (Gnu-style) license was not so
acceptable as pure public domain code. The Group was quite intent
on solving this very quickly.
o A better vt100 full-screen browser is needed for a large dial-up
user base.
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NCSA is likely to bring out a public domain very simple to install
server, as a partial solution to the first two issues issues.
There was a proposal to create a small group to implement the vt100
client, which formed and aims to implement the product for public
release.
vt100 client: [Note: Minutes after the BOF we received an announcement
of the ``Lynx'' 2.0 beta release by Lou Montulli. This may solve the
problem or at least provide a base. Lynx is a vt100 full screen
hypertext WWW client. Check it out by telnetting to
ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu and logging in as www. Source and binaries are
available by anon FTP from acs220.cc.ukans.edu]
Standards
The three standards important for WWW at this stage are:
1. The Universal Resource Locators spec defines the addressing syntax
used by WWW. This is to be released immediately as an
Internet-Draft for the standards track.
2. The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) specification defines the
transport format for menus, hypertext and general on-line
documentation. This must be specified at RFC standards track level
in order to be submitted as a MIME content-type. This in turn is
necessary as HTTP uses MIME format for returned multimedia
messages, and we want it to stay MIME-compliant. HTML will
therefore be released as an Internet Draft as soon as possible.
3. HTTP is the access protocol used by WWW servers. An extended
(back-compatible) version is in use in the 2.0 and above CERN
software. This is quite open to extension and so any comment on
the protocol should be discussed on the www-talk list.
It was agreed to put these documents through the IIIR Working Group
whose Chair, Chris Weider, has agreed to oversee their passage. The BOF
will not, therefore, meet again or propose a WWW working group.
Mailing lists and Newsgroup
To join the technical mailing list, send a mail message to:
www-talk-request@info.cern.ch
for human attention. There is a newsgroup currently being formed. Its
name is comp.infosystems.www. To vote on its creation, please send mail
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to either:
www-yes@msen.com or www-no@msen.com
depending whether you wish the group to be formed or not.
Attendees
Vikas Aggarwal aggarwal@jvnc.net
N. Akiko Aizawa akiko@nacsis.ac.jp
Harald Alvestrand Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.no
Robert Beer r-beer@onu.edu
Richard Bjers rich.bjers@uc.edu
Thomas Brisco brisco@pilot.njin.net
Sandy Bryant slb@virginia.edu
Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
David Conklin conklin@jvnc.net
Naomi Courter naomi@concert.net
Brent Curtiss bcurtiss@magnuss.ocs.ohio-state.edu
Mark Davis-Craig mad@merit.edu
Alan Emtage bajan@bunyip.com
Roger Fajman raf@cu.nih.gov
Jill Foster Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk
Ned Freed ned@innosoft.com
Marcello Frutig frutig@rnp.impa.br
Jim Fullton Jim.Fullton@cnidr.org
Maria Gallagher maria@nsipo.nasa.gov
Kevin Gamiel kevin.gamiel@concert.net
Joan Gargano jcgargano@ucdavis.edu
Greg Gicale gicale@ohio.gov
Terry Gray gray@cac.washington.edu
Susan Harris srh@umich.edu
Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu
Russ Hobby rdhobby@ucdavis.edu
Ellen Hoffman ellen@merit.edu
Susan Horvath shorvath@merit.edu
Inna Il'yasova ilyasova@meg.uncg.edu
Lenore Jackson jackson@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov
Neil Katin katin@eng.sun.com
John Klensin klensin@infoods.unu.edu
Jim Knowles jknowles@binky.arc.nasa.gov
Edward Krol e-krol@uiuc.edu
Hock-Koon Lim lim@po.cwru.edu
Daniel Long long@nic.near.net
David Lovering lovering@bldrdoc.gov
Bruce Mackey brucem@cinops.xerox.com
Samir Malak malaks@alice.uncg.edu
Kent Malave kent@bach.austin.ibm.com
Janet L. Marcisak jlm@ftp.com
April Marine april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov
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Jerry Martin jerry+@osu.edu
Michael Mealling michael@fantasy.gatech.edu
Mitra mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us
Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu
Masataka Ohta mohta@cc.titech.ac.jp
Pete Percival percival@indiana.edu
David Perkins dperkins@synoptics.com
Marsha Perrott mlp+@andrew.cmu.edu
Mark Prior mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au
Robert Raisch raisch@ora.com
Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu
Francois Robitaille francois.robitaille@crim.ca
Carl Schoeneberger 70410.3563@Compuserve.com
Jennifer Sellers sellers@nsipo.nasa.gov
Jane Smith Jane.Smith@cnidr.org
Mark Smith mcs@umich.edu
Larry Snodgrass snodgrass@bitnic.educom.edu
Craig Todd ctodd@desire.wright.edu
Matt Tuttle snodgras@cren.net
Gregory Vaudreuil gvaudre@cnri.reston.va.us
Ruediger Volk rv@informatik.uni-dortmund.de
Janet Vratny janet@apple.com
Chris Weider clw@merit.edu
Les Wibberley lhw24@cas.org
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