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CL-HTTP 59.26 PreRelease
CL-HTTP 59.26 Pre-Release (MAC 2.4.0, ACL 1.5.19, LW 1.1.0 LCL, 4.2.4)
Overview:
A pre-release now CL-HTTP 59.26 is now available. We would appreciate
learning if there are any significant bugs over the next week, at which point
the final release will issue.
The objective of this release is to bring the server close to HTTP 1.1 and get
several substantial new components in people's hands sooner rather than later,
when there will be more components to learn.
Contents:
FTP Location
Documentation
Platforms
New Features
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FTP Location:
CL-HTTP 59.26 Pre-Release is now available from the development FTP site.
Mac: ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/users/jcma/cl-http/devo/mac-cl-http-59-26-pre.sea.bin
UNIX: ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/users/jcma/cl-http/devo/sources-59-26-pre.tar.Z
Lispm: ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/users/jcma/cl-http/devo/lispm-59-27-pre.reel-1
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Documentation:
The home page has no pointers to the pre-release because www.ai.mit.edu is
crashed.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/cl-http/home-page.html
In the interim,
http://wilson.ai.mit.edu/cl-http/cl-http.html
provides access to most documentation.
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Platforms:
* MAC running under MCL 3.9 (PowerPC), MCL 3.0 (and MCL 2.0.1 with the
usual caveats). Please report bugs, problems, or suggestions to
bug-mac-cl-http@ai.mit.edu The client works on the Mac but the Web
walker requires some work on the TCP substrate.
* Lisp Machine under Symbolics Genera 8.3 (also Open Genera 1.0)
All facilities work here accept Hallvard's HTML parser.
* UNIX
o Allegro Common Lisp 4.2., 4.3 Please report bugs, problems,
or suggestions to bug-acl-cl-http@ai.mit.edu The client has
been ported, and so, the web walker may work as well.
o LispWorks Common Lisp 3.2.2. Please report bugs, problems,
or suggestions to bug-lw-cl-http@ai.mit.edu The client has
been ported, and so, the web walker may work as well.
o Lucid Common Lisp: This port has not been updated for the
present release. Any volunteers who wish to help out should
contact bug-lcl-cl-http@ai.mit.edu
The new release includes a number of fixes, performance enhancements,
extensions, updated specifications, and some new documentation.
We want to hear what people are doing or would like to do with CL-HTTP
so that we can better understand the needs of the user community.
Discussion on www-cl@ai.mit.edu is encouraged to help steer server development
according to the wishes of the user community.
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New Features:
59.26
* HTTP 1.1 Compliance: The server is close to minimal HTTP 1.1 compliant,
except for a couple of tidbits, most notably chunking content transfer
encoding. Connections are persistent for statice resources for all
content types. Static files with content type text are transferred
using a CRLF (binary format on several architectures), which is cached
automatically. Virtual hosts are available for HTTP 1.1 clients, as
well as some late HTTP 1.0 clients (e.g., Netscape 2.0).
* W3P Presentation System: A light-weight and fast presentation system
has been integrated with the server for use in generating form queries
and parsing form returns. W3p implements a subset of the Common Lisp
Interface Manager, version 2.1. In a later release, a Dynamic Form
Processing layer will be added above W3p. Chris Vincent Beta-Test
* Web Server Configuration: The server can be configured over the Web
using W3P and a preference facility. This paves the way for booting
binary images containing only the server and configured them from a
Web interface rather than from Lisp.
* VRML Generation: A set of generation macros for the Virtual Reality
Modeling Language support VRML 1.0. A brief tutorial introduces Lisp
programmers to generating 3 dimensional graphics on the fly under
program control. Rainer Joswig
* W4 Constraint-Guided Web Walker: A web walker is included in the
distribution, but must be loaded separately. It provides a constraint
posting architecture control and action. The basic HTTP client has
been ported to all platforms. Alpha-Test.
* Distributed AI Applications: A MIME type, Application/Lisp-SExp, has
been defined to allow Lisp programs to Post values from the basic
client to the server. A response function on the server may execute
and return Lisp values to the client. This clean facility for remote
procedure call provides a foundation for building distributed AI
applications.
* Put Method: Netscape Gold 3.0b5 clients and the basic HTTP client
can use the PUT method to publish Web documents to the server.
* Contributions Directory: A directory for general-purpose
contributions by users has be added at HTTP:CONTRIB; Hallvard
Traetteberg has contributed an HTML parser and a Lisp-based GIF
generation package.
* Fast Access Logging: A dedicated process now handles writing access
logs for each port served. This allows threads to be reused faster
because they do not wait for their log entry to be written. Disk
contention is reduced because multiple logs are written in sequence
while keeping the log file open.
* Automatic GIF Image Sizing: Netscape 1.1 & 2.0 image macros
automatically default the size of GIF images when
http:*image-sizes-default-automatically* is non-null. This
speeds the display of images on major clients. Shannon Spires
* Mail Archive Facility: Archives of email discussions can be exported
using the :MAIL-ARCHIVE export type, found in
http:examples;mail-archive.lisp. This facility provides several
views on the archive, is always current, and can be extended via
subclassing. New mail formats beyond the current Lisp Machine, Eudora,
UNIX Rmail formats are easily added.
Follow-Ups: