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CL-HTTP 60.11 Released
CL-HTTP 60.11 (MCL 2.4.8, ACL 1.8.19, LW 1.1.7 LCL, 4.2.4)
CL-HTTP version 60.11 is now available from the home page and FTP site.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/cl-http/home-page.html
ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/users/jcma/cl-http/
The current release is available for:
* 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
* Lisp Machine under Symbolics Genera 8.3 (also Open Genera 1.0)
* UNIX
o Allegro Common Lisp 4.2, 4.3
OS: SunOS 4.1.3x; Solaris 2.4, 2.5
Please report bugs, problems, or suggestions to
bug-acl-cl-http@ai.mit.edu
o LispWorks Common Lisp 3.2.2.
Please report bugs, problems, or suggestions to
bug-lw-cl-http@ai.mit.edu
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
However, Lucid users can run CL-HTTP 58.12 until
someone updates the port.
* Windows
o Allegro Common Lisp. Olivier Clarisse has an alphatest
port using a portable threading package. Contact
Olivier@ai.mit.edu for further details. -:)
This release features a protocol upgrade to HTTP 1.1. CL-HTTP may be the first
HTTP 1.1 server available. Because HTTP 1.1 remains an IETF draft standard, we
may ask you to upgrade any public servers to a new version of CL-HTTP in the
event that any significant defects in the standard itself are discovered.
This is not likely because the standard is extremely close to final approval
as an Internet RFC in the coming weeks. If HTTP 1.1 protocol design bugs are
discovered, they are most likely to involve interactions with HTTP 1.0
proxies. Should you notice any such difficulties please report them
immediately to bug-cl-http@ai.mit.edu so that we can forward them to the HTTP
working group for consideration.
Otherwise, this release includes a number of new major facilities and many bug
fixes and myriad small enhancements.
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.
Significant Features:
60.11
* HTTP 1.1 Compliance: The server complies with the HTTP 1.1 IETF
draft standard dated July 4, 1996 for all platforms (except Lucid).
Connections are persistent for static and dynamic 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. Persistent
connections, performance tuning, and general hardening have
enhanced usability. W4 runs on all platforms except Lucid, most
robustly on the Lisp Machine. Beta-Test. An HTML parser
has been integrated as a url generator. 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. See the
example in http:examples;client.lisp
* Put Method: Netscape Gold 3.0 clients and the basic HTTP
client can use the PUT method to publish Web documents to the
server.
* Client-Side Cookies: Facilities for setting and using cookies
are now available. See computing response functions.
* Netscape 3.0 HTML Generation: HTML generation has been
extended to support Netscape 3.0 extensions, which include HTML
3.2 tables.
* Contributions Directory: A directory for general-purpose
contributions by users has be added at HTTP:CONTRIB; See also
HTTP:MAC;CONTRIB;
* 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.
* Charsets: Character sets other than the HTTP default of
:ISO-8859-1 may be specified for all text content types at
export time, including directories. Similarly, dynamically
computed pages may specify alternate character sets.
* Languages: ISO language abbreviations can be associated with
all resources, whether static or dynamic.
* Computed Directory Listings: The standard url-oriented listing
of directory paths may be over-ridden by a computed response. A
built-in function is available to serve index.html files instead
of standard listings.