Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/inet/ietf/93mar/www-minutes-93mar.txt

Text File | 1993-05-14 | 7.1 KB | 205 lines

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:


     [e-mail]


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:


     [e-mail] or [e-mail]


depending whether you wish the group to be formed or not.

Attendees

Vikas Aggarwal           [e-mail]
N. Akiko Aizawa          [e-mail]
Harald Alvestrand        [e-mail]
Robert Beer              [e-mail]
Richard Bjers            [e-mail]
Thomas Brisco            [e-mail]
Sandy Bryant             [e-mail]
Jodi-Ann Chu             [e-mail]
David Conklin            [e-mail]
Naomi Courter            [e-mail]
Brent Curtiss            [e-mail]
Mark Davis-Craig         [e-mail]
Alan Emtage              [e-mail]
Roger Fajman             [e-mail]
Jill Foster              [e-mail]
Ned Freed                [e-mail]
Marcello Frutig          [e-mail]
Jim Fullton              [e-mail]
Maria Gallagher          [e-mail]
Kevin Gamiel             [e-mail]
Joan Gargano             [e-mail]
Greg Gicale              [e-mail]
Terry Gray               [e-mail]
Susan Harris             [e-mail]
Alisa Hata               [e-mail]
Russ Hobby               [e-mail]
Ellen Hoffman            [e-mail]
Susan Horvath            [e-mail]
Inna Il'yasova           [e-mail]
Lenore Jackson           [e-mail]
Neil Katin               [e-mail]
John Klensin             [e-mail]
Jim Knowles              [e-mail]
Edward Krol              [e-mail]
Hock-Koon Lim            [e-mail]
Daniel Long              [e-mail]
David Lovering           [e-mail]
Bruce Mackey             [e-mail]
Samir Malak              [e-mail]
Kent Malave              [e-mail]
Janet L. Marcisak        [e-mail]
April Marine             [e-mail]

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Jerry Martin             [e-mail]
Michael Mealling         [e-mail]
Mitra                    [e-mail]
Keith Moore              [e-mail]
Masataka Ohta            [e-mail]
Pete Percival            [e-mail]
David Perkins            [e-mail]
Marsha Perrott           [e-mail]
Mark Prior               [e-mail]
Robert Raisch            [e-mail]
Joyce K. Reynolds        [e-mail]
Francois Robitaille      [e-mail]
Carl Schoeneberger       [e-mail]
Jennifer Sellers         [e-mail]
Jane Smith               [e-mail]
Mark Smith               [e-mail]
Larry Snodgrass          [e-mail]
Craig Todd               [e-mail]
Matt Tuttle              [e-mail]
Gregory Vaudreuil        [e-mail]
Ruediger Volk            [e-mail]
Janet Vratny             [e-mail]
Chris Weider             [e-mail]
Les Wibberley            [e-mail]



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