Change History of libwww
This is a list of changes to libwww in reverse
chronological order. See also the release
notes for the latest release.
This is a minor release that mainly provides bug fixes and small
enhancements that have been commited to CVS since the last release. Vladimir
Koslov provided indispensable help for testing and preparing the Win32
release. Special thanks to Wayne Davison, Art Barstow, Peter Stamfest, Zhu
Qun-Ying, Jens Meggers, Ken Olum for their contributions.
- Summary of principal changes (the ChangeLog
provides a detailed account)
- The following sample applications could core dump under Windows:
head.c, getheaders.c, chunk.c, chunkbody.c,
multichunk.c
- When retrieving an object from the cache, the HTTP headers
associated with the object weren't stored in the HTResponse
object.
- The cache garbage collector could go into an endless loop.
- The HTResponse object now returns the HTTP reason.
- Update of expat to version 19990728.
- Optimization, enhancements, and bugs fixes to the HTRDF module
- Some memory leaks and compiler warning fixes.
- The robot could hang when accessing local files.
- Optimization of the HTChunk and HTHash modules.
- Outstanding bugs
- The
webbot
crashes from time to time under Windows. It
seems to be a problem while reading the robots.txt
file,
where the application frees a request that's still registred in the
Windows async. loop.,
- The
tiny.c
sample application doesn't prompt the user
with a text input.
- Interpretation of FD_CLOSE
under Windows.
- The FTP implementation has memory leaks and doesn't remember the
path or authentication information correctly.
- Compiling with -O2 and -Wall reveals some unitialized variables in
HTDIR and HTFTP.
- To do
- Compile the answers to the libwww survey (volunteers are
welcome).
This is the proper first 5.3 release. We changed the minor release number
as many people had started to refer to the previous release as 5.3.0.
- What's new
- Art Barstow (barstow@w3.org): fixed a bug with the handling of
parseType="Literal" by the RDF parser. None of the elements [and
attributes if there were any] were added to the literal. The only
string that was added to the literal was the elements' content (aka
CDATA).
- Changed the Makefile so that .html->.h file conversion will only
be done with Perl. This is faster than using the www tool.
- Updated the latest autoconf, automake, and libtools scripts. Now
using the separate config.guess
and config.sub scripts.
- Extended the libwww/SSL API with HTSSL_setProtocol () and
HTSSL_verifyDepth () functions to allow to change the TSL/SSL default
protocol and the certificate verification depth. The wwwssl
application was updated accordingly.
- Diverse documentation updates provided by Fox One.
- Fixed bugs
- The www wasn't able to convert .html files into .h ones
anymore.
- the Extrnals.html file wasn't being
generated on all platforms.
- Applied diverse patches for libwww/SSL which should correct the
multiple request and Post problems that people had signaled. Many
thanks to Heiner Kallweit and Gertjan van Winger for their
contributions.
- Other patches I (unfortunately) forgot to note down and am too lazy
to get them out from CVS... (sorry, will keep better notes next
time!)
- Outstanding bugs
- Interpretation of FD_CLOSE
under Windows.
- The FTP implementation has memory leaks and doesn't remember the
path or authentication information correctly.
This is the first release done after Henrik's depart from W3C. We're
calling it a pre-release, as we're not sure if we prepared it correctly.
Special thanks to Henrik Frystik, Fox One, Vladimir Koslov, Rafaelle Sena,
and all the other libwww User's Community for their patches and continuous
support.
- What's new
- Included all the patches commited to CVS since the last release.
It's been over a year since the last release and we don't have an
exact count of what was commited. Many of them consisted of memory
leak fixes and fixup with the asynchronous event handlers and timers
under Win32.
- Integrated the libwww-SSL code back into libwww (the US export
restriction doesn't apply anymore to source code).
- Upgraded expat to v1.1.
- Merged the outstanding Amaya libwww changes into the main tree.
For this release, special thanks go to the libwww hackers Olga Antropova,
Vladimir Kozlov, John Punin Olga Antropova, Jose Kahan, Vladimir Kozlov, John
Punin, Bob Racko, and Raffaele Sena for all their hard work and cool new
features including:
Also in progress is work on
Release 5.2.6, Feb 24, 1999
This release is the has a lot of bug fixes and new features - primarily as
a result of lots of really cool work done by people hacking away on libwww
including:
Release 5.2, Nov 1, 1998
This release is the first release after the libwww
CVS Repository was made public in May 1998. At the time of the release
there were more than 500 checked out versions of the libwww code base and
numerous people have contributed to this release in form of bug fixes, extensions, and new features.
New Features
- Added
a method in the HTAccess API for
posting forms and returning the response as a HTChunk object
- Added handler for unknown content encodings in the Command Line tool to be a through line
(identity decoding) using the best matching
mechanism
- Added support for regex handling of
proxies so that you can now say something like this: all URIs
matching this regex goes to this proxy, all others go to this, etc.
- Better control of how much data is being sent in the REQUEST OBJECT. Now you can both get the
total number of bytes read and written as well as the number of entity
(body) bytes read and written. This uses features provided by the HTNet
object
- The default implementation of progress
notifications now uses the new HTRequest bytes read/written
methods.
- The mime parser in HTMIME.c and HTMIMERq.c now uses the updated control of
bytes read/written.
- Added support for version conflict detection in Web Commander (update all of WinCom area)
- The Web Commander - the Win32 GUI PUT
sample application has been updated from the ground up - try it out!
Bug Fixes
Release 5.1m May 21, 1998
New Features
- Changed the encoding
streamstack builder to support best matching capabilities.
This means that you now can register a default decoder like this:
HTFormat_addCoding("*", HTIdentityCoding, HTIdentityCoding,
0.3)
, for example where HTIdentityCoding
is a coder
provided by libwww.
- Added support for writing out
Link: header fields when uploading a document. The Link:
header field is use to represent link relationship between documents
- Changed HTEscape to deal with silly
MSDos file type escaping of the drive name (using ":").
- Added support for automatic authentication
(!) in the Command Line Tool so that it
is now possible to authenticate from scripts etc.
- Direct access to the CVS repository -
checkout libwww and work with the latest version!
- Made sure that we write more often as we check for expired timers in
HTWriter.c
- Added a "repetitive" flag to timers so that they can be created to say
call me every 30ms over and over again
- Added support for building libwww as a shared library on Unix (it is
already using DLLs on Windows). If you have any problems with shared
libraries on your platform then run
configure with the
--disable-shared
flag and you will
only get the static version. If you are using libwww as a shared library
but do not use the libwww HTML
parser then you MUST include this dummy implementation of the HText interface somewhere in your code. The
reason for this is that the HText interface may be called (it depends a
bit on how your platform supports shared libraries) but an implementation
isn't provided.
- Added support for MySQL access in this simple SQL interface which takes care
of most os the common problems encountered when talking to an SQL server.
Currently I use this for handling
logging in the
webbot but many other features like persistent caching, preferences,
etc. can use the SQL module as well. You
can also see some cool examples of how
to use the robot's logs when querying MySQL through www-sql.
- Changed the name of "config.h" to "wwwconf.h" as the
first
name caused conflicts with other packages
- Changed the name of "sysdep.h" to "wwwsys.h" for the
same reason
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug in the generation of relative
URIs which caused the creation of incorrect relative URIs. Libwww
uses relative URIs in the HTTP referer field and other places to save
(often significant) amount of bandwidth.
- Decreased default max number of outstanding (pipelined) requests from
100 to 50
- Does now check whether we get a broken pipe when writing to the network
from expired timers. This was a bug that it didn't.
- Applied the following patches
- Fixed a problem in the HTWWWStr.c that caused a Y2K
bug if strftime isn't available on the system on where libwww is
running
Release 5.1l March 25, 1998
This is a small add-on to 5.1k that was released two days ago. It has a
few fixes that was discovered while working with the latest Arena browser.
Bug Fixes
- Minor stuff that made PUT work nicer from a user perspective (when to
ask what questions, etc)
- Fixed a few things in the direct WAIS access module
Release 5.1k March 23, 1998
New Features
- Added a simple "single user lock" on the persistent cache as it gets
confused if multiple users are using it.
- On Unic, the header files are now installed when running "make
install". The default location is
"/usr/local/include/w3c-libwww".
- On Unix, aset of icons that can be used when browsing local file
directories are also installed - the default location is
"/usr/local/share/w3c-libwww"
Bug Fixes
- These are the patches that I have received
for the current release. They will be applied to this upcoming
release.
- Fixed a few bugs that make Arena run on top of
the latest version
Release 5.1j March 9, 1998
New Features
- Made the distinction between Transfer-Encoding and
Content-Transfer-Encoding clear - they were somewhat mixed up before.
Libwww also now supports multiple transfer-codings as well as multiple
content-codings as required by HTTP/1.1.
- Changed the Stream Stack to not call
the
SaveLocally
stream any more but instead return an
ErrorStream. The reason for this is that there are several places in the
stram stack building algorithm where we might want to save the file to
local file: when there is a content type that we don't understand, a
content-encoding, or a transfer-encoding (or a combination of these) that
we don't understand. Now we can make sure that the
SaveLocally
stream is only called once
- Added support for "identity" transfer-coding and
content-coding
- Added support for Allow header when doing PUT and POST
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a problem handling wrong HTTP responses from NCSA HTTPD derived
servers (they don't include a version number when responding to an
HTTP/1.1 request)
- PUT now works much more reliable, and it also works on Windows (at
least NT, I haven't tested it on 95).
- Fixed a refresh problem in the Line Mode
Browser which caused it to sometimes render the screen twice.
Release 5.1f January 1998
New Features
Bug Fixes
- Fixed some problems in the HTRelative function in HTParse.
Release 5.1e January 1998
New Features
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug in ouputstream that caused
buffer to be overwritten in some cases when blocked on write
Release 5.1d December 1997
Bug Fixes
New Features
- Better logging facilities with support for multiple log objects including referer
logging, Common Log File format logging and general logging filters.
Release 5.1c September 1997
Release 5.1b April 1997
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a problem in HTRules.c as
described in this
bug report
- Fixed coredump problem in HTGetTmpFileName() as described in this
bug report. This affects also the HTCache module which relies on temporary
file names
- Made the persistent cache more robust
which in some cases will save a segmentation fault
- Fixed problem in wwwsys.h as reported
in this
bug report
- Fixed problem where a request was not flushed if using blocking sockets
as reported by this
bug report.
- A limitation in the current persistent cache is that it only works in
non-preemptive mode. Hence if using blocking sockets then the cache
should be disabled. This is now the default behavior in the libwww profiles.
- Bug fixed that caused the
maxsock
variable used in
select()
not to be decreased when deleting a socket in the
default event manager
- Changed the connection management so that it complies with the Connection
Management draft by Jim Gettys and Alan Freier. The HTTP client now
closes idle connections after 60 seconds which is a heuristic period
chosen by Jeff Mogul in the paper "The
Case for Persistent-Connection HTTP". The number can be dynamically
changed using the
HTHost_setPersistTimeout()
and the
HTHost_persistTimeout()
methods. This could be made more
advanced so that we take into account any information given in the
"Keep-Alive" header but isn't for now.
- Fixed a problem when a HTTP/1.1 server sent a response including a
Connection: close header using the close of the TCP connection
as a delimiter. This problem was pointed out in this
bug report
- Fixed security hole handling HTTP 305 proxy
redirection codes. The proxy location returned in the responses was
enabled as a permanent proxy without any notification. The operation now
requires explicit acknowledgement from the user
- Fixed potential (but small) security whole handling parsing a new rules file. This operation
now requires explicit acknowledgement from the user.
Release 5.1 February 18 1997
New Features and APIs
- Added support pipelining
- Support for zlib based decompression in content encoding
Bug Fixes
This release was originally called 4.1 but because we now have a complete
HTTP/1.1 client side implemenation including a
persistent cache manager and full support
for uploading documents, we decided to call it version 5.0 instead.
The focus for version 5.0 of the W3C Sample Code Library
is to provide a set of higher level, application specific APIs for accessing
the Web. These APIs - called profiles -
will help the application, a Web client for example, to more easily use the
full potential of the application independent Library core. Also, the Library contains a
significantly better interface for easy access to the Web through a large set of functions specialized to perform
certain Web operations like PUT
, POST
,
DELETE
, GET
and HEAD
.
This release contains a TCL add-on to the Robot
example application and a Deja GNU Test suite
for the Library. Also, it support HTTP/1.1
including persistent connections, two-way PUT
, and the
host
header. There is also a sample PEP
implementation, that although incomplete can give an idea of where we're
headed using PEP.
Bug Fixes
- Changed
HTGetTmpName
not
to use tempnam() anymore as it caused problems.
- Added argument to
HTParseTime
so that we can decide
whether we want to expand relative times or not.
- The request pointer passed to a progress
notification may be
NULL
-be aware!
Release 4.1b5 August 24 1996
Release 4.1b5 is mainly a bug fix release after intensive testing against
the Common Lisp Server which also is a
HTTP/1.1 application. However, it also has a few new features worth
noting.
New Features
- Added support for the entity-tag validator headers:
If-Match
and If-None-Match
and also for the
date validators If-Modified-Since
and
If-Unmodified-Since
. We only use either etags or date stamps
and the entity-tag validators have precedence over the date
validators.
- Added acinclude.m4 in the WWW directory. The file is used by
automake
- Changed the configure script to handle
the location of the icons distributed as part of the libwww distribution
package.
- Added full support for
Cache-Control
header and
Connection
header. Both headers can have an association list
of name value pairs as directives.
- Moved the memory cache handler (history handler) from the line mode browser to be a BEFORE filter which can be used by other
applications as well. It is now included as part of the client profile.
- Changed the expiration handling API to
not include any notification messages. Any messages to be transmitted to
the user is now handled by the Alert
manager.
- Added persistent cache manager to
the client profile.
- Added validation command to the line mode browser
- Changed the cache validation management in the Request object. The validation scheme is now
compatible with HTTP/1.1 caching including handling of the history list.
We have changed the validation enumerations from
HT_ANY_VERSION
, HT_MEM_REFRESH
,
HT_CACHE_REFRESH
, HT_FORCE_RELOAD
HT_CACHE_OK
, HT_CACHE_FLUSH_MEM
,
HT_CACHE_VALIDATE
, HT_CACHE_FLUSH
.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed problem when getting a
connection
header with the
close
directive. The problem caused libwww to loop as it
recursively tried to free the input stream pipe
- Fixed bug in access authentication which could cause libwww to loop if
the top level of the site was protected.
- Fixed bug that caused a core dump if receiving a message body without
any
content-type
. Now the data is passed to the guessing stream which hopefully can handle
it.
Release 4.1b4 August 20 1996
HTTP version 1.1 allows for effective use of persistent connections.
However, in orderto make this work, a client application must be capable of
recovering from a closed connection between sent requests. The beta 4 version
of libwww supports automatic connection recovery and provides the
functionality for performing pipelining of requests. That is, there can be
multiple outstanding requests on the same connection In order to do this, the
release contains modifications to the Channel Object, the Host object and the Net object.
New Features
- Added support for case-insensitive searching for proxies via
environment variables
- Added support for proxy authentication
- Changed handling of proxies so that they are not included in the URL
but is now instead part of the request object. This allows for better
handling of proxies and also for more freely use of the proxy filter as
it doesn't affect the other filters anymore.
- Added support for TRACE HTTP method in the HTAccess module.
- Updated News DLL and incorporated News patches from Maciej
Puzio
HT_PERSISTENT
is now obsolete and should be replaced by
HT_PENDING
- The
HTChannelMode
enumeration describing the flow of a
channel has been replaced by HTTransportMode
as it is now a
part of the transport object and not the channel object
HTNet_idle()
has been removed and replaced by
HTNet_isIdle()
. The function returns YES if there are no
pending requests in libwww at all.
- Add support for checking public information about a host and use this
information when issuing a PUT, for example. Also add check for host
element in HTAccess when doing PUT. We
may have public information available
- Changed the return codes defined in HTUtils to reflect the values of the HTTP
spec.
- Added support for
305 Use Proxy
redirections
- Updated HTDir module to better use the
fact that we know that an entry is a directory or not. Now it appends a
'/' to the URL if it is a directory. That way we often avoid a
redirection.
- Removed WWWRules as interface and merged it with the WWWApp interface. The reason was that the
two were highly alike and depended on each other
Bug Fixes
- Fixed problem with uploading directory listing using chunked
encoding
- Fixed autoconf to handle WAIS and updated the HTWAIS.c module
- Fixed race problem in PUT on alphas
- Tested reentrant version of libwww (uses
_REENTRANT
define)
- Fixed problem in file name conversion from URL to local format on
Windows
Release 4.1b3 July 20 1996
The file access module now does content
negotiation by default. This means that all local file access (including from
client applications) do content negotiation when accessing local
files. Content negotiation can be turned off by setting a flag in the request object.
A main difference in beta 3 is that we now have a set of "application profiles" that helps the
application to initialize libwww core to
work as a typical client, robot or other type of application. This should
replace the huge initialization procedure seen in previous versions. This is
in fact a result of the core being so flexible - it is inly a framework for
accessing the Web. The application must initialize all the functionality at
run-time. You can see the various profile functions in the WWWInit interface.
The second main difference is that the BEFORE and AFTER
filters have been more explicit than before. The HTLoadStart
and
HTLoadTerminate
functions actually covered many typical
BEFORE and AFTER filter functions like looking for proxies,
searching the cache, looking for rule file matching, and logging etc.
However, two functions were not covered by this: redirection and
authentication. That is why the application in previous version had to
supply this functionality. However, in beta 3 we have split up the
HTLoadStart
and HTLoadTerminte
functions into a set of filters which each perform only a
single function, for example looking for proxies. The split has two
functions: first it shows how you can use filtes to add new functionality to
the Library and second it can be used by more types of applications. A result
of the new filters is that we also have default redirection and
authentication filters so you don't have to provide this anymore.
The filters are set up as part of the
profiles so you will normally not have to
register them individually.
New features and Changes
- Introduced HTUserprofile class to
handle host and user specific information
- Added Chunked decoding and encoding
module
- A host name is not expanded to a fqdn name as it is not reliable
enough. Now we just keep it as is, that is we don't expand www to
www.w3.org, for example.
- Updated HTML parser to support
BASE
tag and LINK
tag
- Added new access methods to the HTAccess
module. It is now part of the WWWApp
interface
- Updated the Icon module and added
icons to the distribution file
- Added a Stream to Chunk converter
for easier conversion of streams into dynamic memory buffers
- Introduced HTLib as a new core module.
It contains generic information about the core which used to be in the
HTAccess module.
- Added support for HTTP/1.1. Most of the
HTTP/1.1 specification is now in place, we still need some headers and
some features but this version can be considered to be compliant.
- Added suport for proxy authentication as specified by HTTP/1.1
- Added support for case-insensitive searching for proxies via
environment variables
- Changed handling of proxies so that they are not included in the URL
but is now instead part of the request object. This allows for better
handling of proxies and also for more freely use of the proxy filter as
it doesn't affect the other filters anymore.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed problem with uploading directory listing using chunked
encoding
- Fixed problem in the rule file parser. It didn't parse the last line of
the config file
- Fixed autoconf to handle WAIS and updated the HTWAIS.c module
- Fixed race problem in PUT on alphas which caused the PUT operation to
hang under certain circumstances
Release 4.1b1 May 20 1996
New Features
- Introduced GNU autoconf configure script for compiling on Unix
platforms instead of the old BUILD script. This should make it a lot
easier to compile on Unix as we get all the advantages of GNU
autoconf.
- Introduction of the HTUserprofile Class
which keeps track of a "user" known to the Library
- New access authentication interface allowing for dynamic registration
of new access authentication mechanisms. It provides an easy API for
hooking in new schemes.
- Improved handling of trace messages which allows for easy redirection
of trace messages
- Support for registration of content coders/decoders and content
transfer encoders/decoders. This is done the same way as for media types
by registering a set of streams that can handle the various
encodings.
- Support for chunked decoding
- Introduction of the HTHost Class which
keeps track of information about remote hosts
- The DNS Class has been simplified to
handle DNS queries only. All additional information about the remote host
is defined by the HThost Class.
- We have a new HTEvent module which
allows for dynamic registration of an event manager. This will make it
much easier to use external event managers together with libwww. If you
wish to continue to use the event handlers from HTEvntLst, you must
register them explicitly with HTEvent_register. This call is
demonstrated in HTBrowse.
- The HTStream module has been created
containing a set of basiv streams such as an error stream etc.
- Introduction of the HTTransport
Class. This allows for dynamic registration of transport protocols
such as for example the W3Mux protocol, TCP access, local file access
etc.
- All MIME parsing is now done with registered parsers. The HTMIME module only unwraps the MIME
header fields and calls the best parser. The header parsing origonally
done in HTMIME can be found in HTInit.c and
is registered with HTMIMEInit. This call
is demonstrated in HTBrowse.
This upgrade release fixes some bugs and it adds functionality for posting
data from memory. This is the full list of changes:
- Optimized HTTP request header by taken away an "Accept:" line pr
accepted content type and instead use the commna notation.
- Introduced HTMemory as dynamic
memory handler. This module is a part of the WWWUtils interface and it handles better
management of dynamic memory. You can find a full description in the User's Guide.
- We now have an updated list of all
public functions exported from the Library.
- We also present an updated list of all public interfaces
available in the Library. You can find it in the Library Internals.
- PUT and POST from memory is implemented. You can now post data from
memory using the POSTWeb model as for posting remote data objects. The
Interface is described in HTAccess
module. There is a very small dummy test implemented in the Line Mode
browser. You can activate it if you typeedit from the command
line.
- The Mini server now runs (although crude) as a proxy. It is capable of
serving data as a HTTP/HTTP proxy. It is based on the internal Library
event loop and is therefore highly portable. It is not intended to be a
full featured server but a test implementation which shows how to use the
Library in server applications.
- Bug fixed that caused the following problem: If there hasn't been made
a connection between the net->target and the request->output_stream
then the latter is not freed if the request is interrupted.
- The referer URL header can now contain a unlimited length
URL
- A resolver callback function has been introduced in the HTTee stream. This allows the caller to
assign a callback function to resolve conflicts between the return codes
of the two streams.
- The request object as been added as a calling parameter to the HTFWrite stream creation method. This
allows errors from writing to a file to propagate back to the request
object.
- The three streams
HTSaveLocally
,
HTSaveAndExecute
and HTSaveAndCallBack
have
been optimized and they now all use the HTFWrite stream creation method
- We have a new module called HTTPGen.
It generates general HTTP headers. These headers were a part of the MIME
header generator, but by isolating them, we can use the MIME header as a
generic MIME entity header generator.
- Created HTErrorStream which always
returns
HT_ERROR
. It replaces the HTBlackHole has been replace with
HTErrorStream in many places in order to speed up performance
- Made HTTP response stream (which parses the response line only) into a
converter so that we can forward the output exactly as received from the
remote HTTP server. This is important for proxy applications and other
applications that want to see the output untouched.
- The HTChunk module has been made more solid and the amount of memory
allocations has been limited.
- Memory cleanup fixed in content length counter stream and FTP
module
- Introducing HT_CLOSED and HT_PAUSE for handling streams. This was
required, especially after HTTP supports persistent connections where a
document is not delimited by a closed connection.
Release 4.0C January 23 1996
- Automatic redirection and Access authentication has been take n out of
the HTTP module. Instead the new mechanism with request callback
functions are used so that the application can register handlers to
handle these situations. The reason for this change is that not all
applications are interested in having this functionality performed
automatically.
- Authentication handler and redirection handler added to both the Line
Mode Browser and the Command Line Tool
- Added three possible return codes on which a request callback function
can be called:
- HT_PERM_REDIRECT for permanently moved objects
- HT_TEMP_REDIRECT for temporarily moved objects
- HT_NO_ACCESS for insufficient credentials
- PUT and POST do now work reliably in the Line Mode Browser and the
Command Line Tool. Both can PUT or POST a document from either a
remote HTTP server or the local file system to a remote
HTTP server.
- An important bug-fix in the internal event manager that prevented a
socket to be registered for multiple events at the same time.
- Cleanup of the POSTWeb management in the file module and the HTTP
module
- In addition to progress notification on READ we now support progress
notification when sending a data object
- Spelling mistake fixed. preemtive is changed to
preemptive
- The W3C Mini Robot has now the ability to stop at a certain depth while
traversing the Web.
Release 4.0A December 11 1995
- Created the include HTTPUtil.html - a C file may follow
- Changed HTDoAccept so that it automatically inserts the new socket
descriptor in the Net object.
- HTLoad_terminate moved from HTReqMan to HTHome. It is not automatically
set up in HTLibInit anymore
- Made HTAnchor and HTLink opaque data objects
- changed HTLink_newResult to HTLink_result
- changed HTLink_newMethod to HTLink_method
- Changed HyperDoc to simply a void pointer. This makes it more generic
and the application does not have to actually treat it as a document
anyway
- Introduced the WWW_DEBUG internal format that can be used to redirect
debug information, for example from a HTTP redirection message etc.
- Request object added to HText_new methods
- changed HTExtParse to HTXParse throughout - H&kon
- HTXParse now null-terminates buffer - H&kon
- return codes from HTTee changed - H&kon
- content-length initialized to -1 - H&kon
- Fixed bug for handling HEAD in HTTP and MIME streams
- Handles of persistent connection is now a semaphore and not a bool
- Changes the event loop so that a timeout handler can return HT_OK or
HT_ERROR. If the code is not HT_OK then stop the event loop
- Changed request of header enumeration:
- General headers have the prefic HT_G_
- Request headers have the prefic HT_C_
- Server headers have the prefic HT_S_
- Entity headers have the prefic HT_E_
- Separated file suffix initialization into HTBInit
- Changed the names in HTChunk to be consistent with the Module_method
scheme
- Introduced HTBInit.c for setup of file suffixes
Alpha Release 7, November 28 1995
Alpha Release 6, November 20 1995
Alpha Release 5, November 8 1995
The Library has now undergone a major restructuring in order to define the
APIs between the various parts and to make it more modular. The new
architecture is described in the Architecture document and includes a
new Net manager that handles a request queue, a DNS manager that handles
persistent connections and a well defined Request manager where the HTRequest
object is an opaque object.
Core Modules
- Generalized the Error Manager to work
on lists instead of as directly on a request object. This makes it
possible to use the error manager in all situations.
- Changed HTAppName and HTAppVersion to parameters to
HTLibInit() instead of as global parameters.
- Introduced a new main include file called WWWApp.h which contains applications
specific modules. None of these modules are actually required to compile
and link the Library, but the application can use them if needed.
- None of the access modules (HTTP, FTP, NNTP, etc.) are set up by
default anymore. This is now for the applications to do.
- Changed TRACE to WWWTRACE as it interferes with macro
on NT
- The balanced binary tree in HTBtree
is not used anymore. The functionality is now provided by the new HTArray module that is a dynamic array of
pointers. It is much like the HTChunk
module but for pointers instead of dynamic strings. The advantage is
that the fast qsort algorithm can be used on the array.
- Moved the two functions
HTWWWTLocal()
and
HTLocalToWWW()
from the HTFile
Module to the HTString module for
converting between local file names and URLs
- It is now possible to register a call back function together with a
timeout that is used in the select call of the event loop. When the
select() call times out, the call back function is called. The
registration can either be so that the call back always is
called when that the select call times out or only when Library
sockets are in use.
- We have a port to PowerMac and 68K!!! This has been provided by Steven
T. Roussey <sroussey@eng.uci.edu> and Brad Barber
<barber@well.com>
- We have changed HTThread to HTNet.c as
thread was too confusing. This module has been cleaned up and rewritten
so that HTNet.c now contains the Net
manager. The Net manager controls the net access so that we only keeps a
specified amount of sockets open simultaneously (called a request queue).
It also partly controls the management of persistent connections together
with the DNS Manager.
- The HTRequest Object is now known to the Request Manager only. It is accessible
through a lot of methods just like the Anchor object etc. The HTAccess module is now a user interface
to the Request Manager but it doesn't have to be used - you can use the
Request Manager directly but often it is easier to go through the Access
Module.
- The Protocol object has been turned into an object internal to the Protocol manager. This means that protocol
information can be accessed via a set of methods provided by the
manager.
- We have changed case sensitive search to insensitive search when
finding an access methods (HTTP, FTP, telnet etc.) for a URL. This
catches silly errors in URLs like HTTP://www.foo.com
- The static protocol declarations have been replaced with a set of
parameters to the creation method of a protocol object in the Protocol Manager which is more handy.
- We added HTProtocol_delete() as method in the Protocol manager. This means that it is now
possible to unregister a protocol at runtime. If you are on a
platform with dynamic linking (for example DLLs) then this can save a lot
of space.
- Introduction of application call back function for memory cache. This
is a part of separating the HText module
and also to make the memory cache manager more flexible. An example
implementation can be found in the GridText module in the Line Mode Browser.
- Full support for the HTLink
object that binds together two anchors. This is a requirement for
keeping track of the Post
Web.
- URL fragment identifiers were case insensitive - they are now case
sensitive
- Added
result
field to the HTLink so that the result of a
posting operation is stored in the link object. This means that the
application can see which post operations succeeded and which didn't.
This can for example be used in a GUI client to show the relations
between the source and destination anchor as "dim" links.
- Fixed bug in put mechanism that caused destinations to accumulate in
the postweb. Now `old' destinations are still registered but not included
in a new postweb - they can, however, be discarded all together, but
often the information is nice to have. On a GUI client, it can be shown
as 'dimmed' destinations.
- Removed remaining outputs directly to stdout using fprintf().
Now all goes through HTAlert module.
This was a problem in some of the protocol modules as well (especially in
the Telnet module).
- The
CacheItems
structure is removed from anchor object and
replaced by (BOOL) CacheHit
. If CacheHit=YES
then the format negotiation and suffix binding is not used in HTFile Module but the object is loaded
directly (from the local file cache) using non-blocking I/O
- Internal DNS/hostname cache optimized and made more flexible to support
persistent connections for all protocols that support this, for
example HTTP, FTP, and NNTP. The first version has support for HTTP only,
but the other ones will follow shortly. and multiple connections to same
address. You can now control the garbage collection of DNS entries based
on time. The DNS object keeps also information about the remote server
(class of request, for example HTTP or FTP and the type of server, for
example HTTP/1.0, HTTP/0.0 etc.). This means that it is possible to
adjust a request to a remote server once the type is known. For example,
the Library now distinguishes between HTTP servers version 0.9, 1.0, and
1.1. New classes and versions can be registered at run time just like
protocol modules.
- HTDoConnect rewritten as a state
machine which makes it a lot easier to understand and change. It is
furthermore and important part of the persistent connection
management.
- Removed
HTMaxRedirect
as a global variable. It is now
private to Request manager with two
methods to access it
- Support for context swapping and call back function in the HTRequest object. This allows the
application to distinguish between multiple ongoing requests. See more
information in the User's Guide.
- Bug fix in HTTCP.c HTGetHostName thanks to
"dave (d.) mielke" <davem@bnr.ca>
Protocol Modules
Stream Modules
- We now have a MIME multipart parser
stream which supports nested MIME multipart messages. This stream
sets up a new MIME parser stream each time it finds a new body. Preamble
and epilog messages are ignored by default but can be redirected to the
special Debug Stream output of the
Request object.
- We have added a content counter stream and a buffer stream in HTConLen module. This can be used to
count the number of bytes in a data object either to be sent to a remote
server or as a check of a received body. Together with the Content Length
counter stream there is also a buffer stream that can buffer up to a
certain amount of dat before it goes transparent.
- We have replaced the internal format identifier
www/mime
with the MIME conforming message/rfc822
format. This may
affect the setup of stream converters that used the old format.
- We have also added a new HTMIMERq
module which is responsible for creatin MIME metainformation when
sending requests. This is used, for example, by the HTTP protocol module and the NNTP protocol module
- For the first time, it is not required to define dummy
definitions of the external declared function in the HText Interface. It is now only referenced
from the HTML module and the Plain Text Presentation module. This means
that applications that do not use the HTML/HText interface no more have
the modules linked into the final object code.
- The SGML module is no longer included
anywhere anymore except where necessary. The structured stream definition
can be found in HTStruct module
- Make registration of callback function for unknown MIME headers in the
MIME parser. The application can now
more easily experiment with new headers. The registration process is
described in the section How to get Started Writing
an App
- Added support for png (lossless graphics format) (patch from unknown?)
into the Guess stream
- Bug fixed in HTML parser It couldn't
handle more than 20 nested HTML tags which can happen for example in
auto-generated HTML documents.
- HTLoadError taken out completely. Replaced by the error manager. It was for (stupid)
historic reasons put into the HTML parser.
Application Modules
- HTInteractive made a private flag to
HTAlert.c. It can now be reached via two
methods in the module.
- All functions in the Alert Module now
has a request object as part of the calling parameters. The reason is
that then the implementation of this module can call a registered call
back function (as described above) so that the user message can be put
into the right context.
- Mem leak fixed in HTLog module and
added result of request to the log file. The log module is no longer
called in the Library at all so if you do not use then it is not included
in the application.
- Rewritten HTHistory module to perform
a better history mechanism - the old version did not work properly. Some
of the new features are
- Support for multiple history lists. You can use the context
information in the request object to find the right list at any given
time.
- The list now supports both back and forward for
navigation. The list is no more "back trace with deletion".
See User's Guide for more
information
- Introduced HTProgress() notifications
for the following operations
- DNS lookup
- connect to remote host (either passive or active)
- read data from network
- write data to network
- request finished
- waiting for free socket
On each of these operations, the library calls HTProgress()
with a code so that the application can define what to do with it.
Generic Utilities
- Introduced HTChunkData() and HTChunkSize() as methods in the HTChunk module. No more need to look into
the HTChunk object itself.
- Changed HTStat to HT_STAT and HTLStat to HT_LSTAT as they are
macros
- The
HTSimplify()
function in the HTParse module now follows the RFC 1808
Specification
- Fixed bug in HTCanon() that got confused
about <http://teller.datawave.net:80/test/../imx/weelogo.gif>
thanks to Henry Minsky
- HTCanon() made private to HTParse module as it is called from
HTSimplify() only
- All replaced with (wb|ab) if known binary output.
This was a problem on Windows 3.1 platform as it inserted extra
CRLF line terminators.
- Created HTNumToStr() in HTString
Module to convert a number to a string using prefixes. This can be
used in the progress notification to write Read 1.6K etc.
Library 3.1, November 14 1995
Official release
Library 3.1pre3 Release Notes, November 13
This is a last test of the 3.1 release. The official 3.1 release will
follow in a few days. The purpose of this third pre-release is simply to
avoid any obvious problems while we still have time. Very little will change
in the final release! The big difference is that Windows NT is fully
supported!
New Features and Interfaces
- Changed "rs6000" to "AIX" and "decstation" to "ultrix" in BUILD script.
The previous names were not obvious
- Have created HTProt module which
handles protocol module registration. It used to be in HTAccess module, but this module is now
uniquely for user requests
- Changed the names of the following functions in the HTProt module
HTRegisterProtocol -> HTProtocol_add
HTProtocolDispose -> HTProtocol_deleteAll
HTProtocolBlocking -> HTProtocol_isBlocking
- Canonicalization now understands host names terminated with a ":", for
example "www.w3.org:" is converted into "www.w3.org"
- HTEvnttd.c is removed from the source tree; it's no longer needed.
Likewise, HTEvent.c is no longer needed; it has been superseded by
HTEvntrg.c and HTEvntrg.html.
- Added support for REENTRANT versions of
getlogin_r
gethostbyname_r
gethostbyaddr_r
ctime_r
localtime_r
gmtime_r
asctime_r
ctermid_r
rand_r
readdir_r
except in HTFTP module as it
will be changed later. Some of the function cause problems on
Solaris...
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug in HTBind_getSuffix that caused garbage file suffixes
- Fixed memory leak in HTAnchor if a child has more than one
destination
Library 3.1 Prerelease 2, November 1 1995
The code word for the 3.1 release is support for remote collaborate work
where people can use HTTP and the Web as a remote authoring environment. The
reason for the slight delay is that this release has a new "Post Web" model
for implementing PUT and POST, the documentation has been reorganized and
rewritten, and some other important features have been incorporated. The Post
Web model is described in the new documentation, see the reference below.
In addition to the new set of features and functionality this release also
is the first example of source code distributed under the W3C conditions.
This means that the code is available to consortium members only within a
month from the release date.
A lot of the work put into this release has been to update the API of the
Library. This is mainly described in the new "User Guide", so please do read
this and remember that comments are welcome!
New Features and Interfaces
- The Post Web model is supported by the following methods to handle the
HTRequest object
- HTRequest_removeDestination()
- HTRequest_linkDestination()
- HTRequest_unlinkDestination()
- HTRequest_removePostWeb()
- HTRequest_killPostWeb()
- HTFile module is completely rewritten
as a state machine much like the HTTP
module. It is now possible to have non-blocking, interruptible I/O
and to PUT and POTS from a local file as well as from a remote HTTP
server.
- HTCopyAnchor is rewritten to use the PostWeb
- The thread model is extended to include a HTThread_kill() function so
that threads are terminated immediately upon request
- HTProxy module is introduced. This
module substitutes the environment variables for defining gateways and
proxies. It can now be done dynamically at run time. For backwards
compatibility HTProxy_getEnvVar() can be used to read the most used
environment variables.
- Taken socket read/write functionality out of HTFormat and created HTSocket module which handles all the
basic network access
- Spawned HTMethod module from
HTAccess module
- Better handling of WAIS src files and use of gateway information
- Upgraded the WAIS to handle version 0.5 of the freeWAIS library.
- Better handling of media types from WAIS responses (guessing)
- All HTTP headers can now be transmitted and received and they can all
be enabled/disabled using a bitmask.
- New functions to support accept encoding, language, and charset
- Guess stream now handles macbinhex format
- No more circular references in any of the Library include files
- Introduced REMOVE and RMDIR as macros instead of direct system
calls
- Removed HTRequest_clear() - it's not safe to reuse a request object
- HTStrip() is now placed in the HTString module
- introducing the method used in the link object in the anchor
- HTTP modified to support PostWeb
Bug Fixes
- Cache is now avoided if in secure mode (no access to local file
system)
- Bug fix to allow simultaneous read and write on the same socket
- Stream stack now dumps to local file if no conversion can be made
- Bug fix that caused core dumps for HTTP 0.9 servers
- Bug fixed in stream stack if system() call is not present. This release
has a new model called "Post Web" for handling put and post from a source
to a multiple number of destinations. Furthermore
Library 3.1 Prerelease 1, May 20 1995
A lot of the work put into this release has been to update the API of the
Library. This is mainly described in the new User Guide,
so please do read this and remember that comments are welcome!
New Features and Interfaces
- Windows NT Support (and possibly Windows 3.1 with Win32S) thanks to
Charlie Brooks, <cbrooks@osf.org>
- A lot easier handling of headers in the HTTP module including support
for extra headers
- Improved HTTP/MIME parser which
recognizes 99% of the HTTP headers The rest will be ready in the next
release! This includes support for "charset" and "level" parameter
- Support for PUT and POST. This is not yet fully implemented but it is
possible to experiment with it
- Big enhancement of the anchor module with support for all HTTP/1.0
headers, garbage collection etc.
- The Cache manager is made more object oriented with a broader set of
methods. The garbage collector is not the best
- HTBind module created for better bindings to file system with new hash
function for improved speed and more functionality than before
- Created HTDateTimeStr() and HTMessageID() in HTString
- Separated HTStructured into its own stream definition module (HTStruct.h)
- Introduced STREAM_TRACE and BIND_TRACE as new debug flag
- Original reason messages are now passed back as a parameter by the
error handler when talking to a remote HTTP server
- Introduction of error_format in the request object. This can be used to
get debug information out of the Library
- Better handling of media types in FTP and Gopher including recognition
of UU encoded files
Bug Fixes
- Eventloop responds now faster on events as it more often does a
select
- HTTP version strings are now string and not floats
- Many platform dependent macros introduced and a lot of cleanup
CERN terminated
its direct engagement in the World Wide Web with the release of Library
version 3.0. The code is now developed and maintained by W3C.
Library 3.0, Mar 21 1995
Many of the modifications and new features are mentioned under the
pre-releases.
- Changed all float to double in order get it
consistent with the working floating type in C
- Fixed problems with memory in HTML.c
- Introduced definition of
errno
constants for WIN32, as
WinSock doesn't define them using BSD notation
Library 3.0 Prerelease 3, Mar 10 1995
New or Changed Features
- All library include files which contains public information for
applications are now contained in the single include file WWWLib.h which is the only one necessary
PLEASE DON'T USE ANYTHING ELSE!!!
- Changed TRACE messages so that the target is the macro TDEST and not
stderr. This means that on platforms that don't support stderr, TRACE
messages can be redirected to a local file.
- Due to the PC Port some modules (definition and declaration files) have
changed names so that the max length is 8 characters:
- Move EnableFrom to HTAccess module.
This variable determines whether the HTTP header From: should
be generated. The default value is off
- Sockets are no longer assumed to be small, non-negative integers, but
uses macros. This should ensure portability to Windows NT.
- Introduced socerrno and errno so that WinSock can use its own
definition whereas `local' errno can still use the well-known
version.
- Introduced
error_stream
as field a HTRequest object. All
information contained in HTTP responses which don't naturally contain a
body entity, for example redirection codes (3xx) and client error codes
(4xx) will be put down this stream so that it can be put into a debug
window.
- HTNewsHost is now a local variable in the HTNews module. Use HTGetNewsHost and
HTSetNewsHost to set and get the current value. The news module will be
rewritten in the near future as it has many problems.
- The HTTP module understands all HTTP/1.0
return codes and is more solid
- Many portability problems has been solved and optimized. Most system
dependent things are now put into tcp
module
- Interface to CSO name server made nicer - generates correct HTML
Bug Fixes
- file:// no more tries ftp:// if host=localhost
- Improved proxy support and fixed bug when reloading a document from a
proxy
- Bug fixed in HTGetHostName() which didn't include a dot <.>
- Bug fixed if UserID/passwd was not correct and don't want to retry
- HTErrorAdd and HTErrorSysAdd no always return HT_ERROR
- Fixed bug in HTGetDomainName when no domain name is present at all
- Add output_flush to request object
- Uses IOCTL as a macro now - not fcntl
- and a lot of other stuff...
Library 3.0 Prerelease 2, Dec 2 1994
- Introduced memory cleanups from Eric Sink into
HTLibTerminate()
- Now the client can provocate a call to
HTEventRequestTerminate()
even when the request never enters
the eventloop. This is necesary so that the client can cancel busy icons,
spinning globes etc.
- Introduced
EVENT_TERM
as return code for the
HTEventHandler function
HTEventHandler() now
has a double pointer so that the
request pointer can be modified from the client
- Fixed bug in
HTSearch()
and HTLoadRelative()
where wrong return code was returned (BOOL instead of int)
- Introduced BlockingIO field in the request object to override the the
mode registered in the protocol object. This can be used as an easy way
to make blocking I/O
Library 3.0 Prerelease 1, Nov 26 1994
New and Changed Features
- Introduced the function HTLibInit() and HTLibTerminate() which MUST be
called when the application starts up and terminates.
- Introduced the modules HTThread and HTEvent. HTEvent is the client
interface when using multithreaded functionality and HTThread is the
internal socket management
- All __STDC__ defines now concentrated to HTUtils.html where it is
called _STANDARD_CODE_ so that _cplusplus also handles this
- `new' and `template' not used a names anymore (confuses C++)
- Removed from field in HTRequest object. This is now handled by the
functions HTGetMailAddres and HTSetMailAddress and the flag HTEnableFrom
in the HTTP module.
- Changed HTSetMailAddress so that a call with parameter equals NULL or
"" clears the contents of the mail-address.
- The number of parameters to Streamstack function is now compatible with
the arguments to a stream converter, so that we don't loose any
information while putting up the stream stack.
- HTOutputSource variable is removed. You should use WWW_SOURCE in the
request object
- HTGuess stream is a a converter compatible stream so that it actually
can be setup as a converter
- The stream methods `abort' and `_free' now returns int instead of void.
On success from these methods `_free' returns 0 and `abort' return
EOF
- Taken HTEscape and HTUnescape and put them into the HTEscape module.
The functionality is the same but now they can be used in utility
programs without linking in the whole Library
Bug Fixes
- Removed bug in WAIS module which caused a lot of core dumps
- Removed bug in format classification from URL suffix in HTGoper when
the file was plaintext
- localhost is now recognized again after canonicalization in
HTLoadFile()
- WAIS SEARCH now produces proper HTML
- Max number of lines in WAIS decreased to 200 as 250 (previous) dumps
core
- Bug fixed in
HTGetHostName()
if we must use the
getdomainname() function.
- Added some support for SCO
- Handling of gopher items of type ERROR (3) changed so no more core
dumps in server
2.17 Release on November 25 1994
New and Changed Features
- The host-cache is now extended so that it tries all
IP-addresses before it fails the request. It always starts with the
fastest IP-address.Different penalty is added to the connect times
dependent of the errno returned from
connect()
.
- In addition to HTSimplify which canonicalizes the URL path, a new
function now canonicalizes the host-part of the URL. This means that URLs
like
http://info/ = http://www.w3.org:80/ = http://INFO.CeRn.CH/ =
http://www.w3.org. = http://www.w3.org/
now all are treated identical. This is useful for all the caches based
on URLs such like the Server document cache and the hostname cache
- TRACE is now differentiated into a bit flag so that TRACE messages can
be turned on and off for individual groups of messages. This was
necessary as the amount of verbose output was growing too much
- Redirection understands now `URI:' and `Location:'. Implemented after
discussion on www-talk
- Changed 404 Error Message to `Access Forbidden'. The URL is no more
included in the message as it is sensitive information
- FTP client now sends full email address of the user as the password for
anonymous access instead of USER@. This allows access to some servers
which don't accept the old format
- The data connection in a FTP session is now based on the return value
sent by the PASV return code rather than the URL. It is not always the
case that the data connection is on the same host as the control
connection
- UserID and Passwd in FTP URLs can now contain special characters, like
'@' etc.
- The Gopher listings are now slightly lighter and don't contain the
`name' and `files' any more
- Support of Gopher info items. They are treated as normal messages. The
gopher code for this is `i'
- WAIS module now guesses the stream format when TEXT is returned from
the WAIS library as it might be HTML.
- The Protocol modules: FTP, WAIS, and Gopher now produce proper HTML
with etc. in the beginning
- Added a function that returns the domain name taken from the same
location as HTGetHostName(). The functionality of obtaining current host
names, mail addresses etc. have improved, see HTTCP.html for more
- Introduced the flag HTInteractive in HTAccess.html to tell whether
functions in HTAlert can prompt the User from within the Library or not.
Default is YES.
- The common BUILD for the Line Mode Browser, the CERN Server and the W3C
Sample Code Library now accepts a command line option:
BUILD linemode | daemon | library
to build a specific component. The default action is to build all
three parts. BUILD is now also provided in a Bourne Shell version
Bug Fixes
- Fixed memory leak in HTWAIS Doc retrieval. However, the functionality
or performance has not changes
- If no host is found in the URL then no attempt is made to connect to
host 0.0.0.0 that is localhost. Some hosts do have an alias for this
address
- Fixed free memory read in redirections. Put redirection counter into
request object. Now no more than (default) 10 redirections are
allowed
- Fixed bug in FTP module to handle really slow hosts in the select call.
The select timed out without the right action taken.
- FTP module chopped off the first line of a Windows NT ftp server as it
doesn't send a traditional first UNIX line. Fixed! Well, it did
look like UNIX, but no more than that :-(
- Problem in HTTeXGen. Some markups was spread over a new line, and LaTeX
doesn't like that.
- Remove the
ACCESS_AUTH
define as it is never used anymore
(no more compilation without access authentication)
- Fixed bug in the ISO Latin 1 translation table in HTML.c. This was a
problem for estonian documents or other with many special characters
- Fixed bug in HTSimplify not skipping host names. HTSimplify is made
faster and is now only called once (both from the server and the client).
Before it was called 2-3 times.
- Bug found in FTP URLs containing UserID and Passwd fixed
- Bug fixed in name generation in client cache
- Removed bug in FTP and IP-rotation on multi-homed hosts. When FTP
server is in PASV mode it sends back a port number on a specific host. In
this case we can't use IP-address rotation.
- Bug with FTP IP-address network order fixed for PASV mode
- Gopher errors (code 3) are now just put as a string as they are not
real error
- Bug fixed in HTWriter.c function
flush()
where a partial
success in NETWRITE would produce a wrong output (repeated buffer)
2.16 Prerelease 2, November 1994
WAIS Client
The WAIS client has been improved and some bugs have been fixed:
- Bug in the parser of the search result from the WAIS module fixed
- Maximum number of lines presented from a search made a configuration
variable. Default value is 100 (was 40)
- Introduced WAIS's own error messages as they are returned from the WAIS
library
- The presentation of WAIS on the screen made nicer (well - I think it
is!)
HTTCP Module
- Bug in the host cache fixed
Access Authorisation
- Premature free of memory fixed
- Missing initialization fixed
2.16 Prerelease 1, April 1994
New Features and Changed Interfaces
HTTP Client
HTTP module contains the code for the HTTP
client. The module is now reorganized and made more modular.
- Automatic Redirection
- Now supported by the HTTP Module. The name of the new URL is parsed
to the client via the error_stack as a ERR_INFO message, see HTError module. The maximum number of
redirections is set by the variable HTMaxRedirections.
- Referer Field in HTTP request
- Clients are provided the possibility of sending a Referer Field in a HTTP Request. This is done by filling out
the HTRequest->parentAnchor field.
- From field in HTTP Request
- Clients can now send the full email address of the current user in
the HTTP From field. The feature is
turned off by default as it might get a bit tricky through a Proxy.
- 204 Response
- Support of return code `204 No Response'
FTP Client
HTFTP module contains the code for the FTP
client. The FTP client has changed a lot in this release. It is now a
complete state machine where the actual action executed is a function of the
current state.
Gopher Client
The Gopher has been revised and
improved error handling has been implemented.
- Information Messages
- Some Gopher servers send back information messages in a line
containing "error.host". This information is treated like login
information from FTP servers so that it is represented as a message
before or after the actual listing.
- Iconized Listings
- Listings now contain icons in the same way as the other listings.
- CSO Name Server
- The CSO Name Server client outputs in HTML and not only <PRE>
as before.
- Content Type Recognition
- The Gopher module uses it's own content-type recognition inherited
from HTTP when handling gopher text and gopher binary files. This
means, that e.g. PostScript files get handled correctly.
Local File Access
The new version of HTFile module is a lot smaller as all Directory listing
stuff has moved to HTDirBrw module. New error handling has been
implemented.
Passive and Active Connection Establishment
Calls to connect() and accept() now go through the functions HTDoConnect()
and HTDoAccept() respectively.
Cache of Host Names and Addresses
HTInetParse() that is called from within HTDoConnect now has an internal
cache of the names and (possible multiple) IP-addresses of visited hosts.
This minimizes the access to the file /etc/hosts and the Domain Name Server,
even though aliases are not recognized in the cache.
The default cache size is 500 entries and a host stays as long as a
connect() succeeds. That is, if connection is refused for some reason, the
host is taken out of the cache.
The time to make a connection to a multihomed host is measured every time
and a mean access time is calculated so that HTDoConnect always takes the
fastest IP-address.
Improved Functionality of DNS requests
The Library now provides functionality for obtaining the full mail address
of the user, full domain name of the host and also the possibility for
setting both values. This means that the user can use his official email
address, e.g. in the HTTP request.
Long directory listings for HTTP, FTP and files on the local file system
supported. For the moment only a part of the functionality, e.g, sorting,
which columns to show etc. is exploited.
Icon Management
Icons in directory listings are bound to MIME content-types and encoding.
They can be found in the HTIcons module.
The default set of icons is set up using HTStdIconInit() and new icons can be
added dynamicly using HTAddIcon().
File Descriptions in Directory Listings
File descriptions are supported for long HTTP directory listings. The
default thing is to peek the title of the HTML files.
Error and Information Message Management
A new error handling module is introduced in HTError. It uses the error_stack entry in the
HTRequest object. It handles nested error
messages so that we can give a reason for the error, e.g.
Error in ...
This error occurred because ...
This is caused by ...
etc.
It also makes it possible for the Library to pass information back to the
client so that the the Library doesn't act like a `black hole'. An example is
HTTP redirection with status code `Moved 301'. Now the new URL is parsed back
to the client via the error_stack so that the client can update the reference
when possible.
The function that generates and outputs the error messages to the user is
put into HTErrorMsg Module so that it can be overwritten by a smart client or
server.
Guessing the Content Type of a Stream
The HTGuess module reads a part a stream and determines the content type
with the highest probability from a statistical analysis.
Minor Stuff
- tmpnam()
- Because of problems on NeXT platforms the tmpnam() function is now
replaced by HTFWriter_filename() in HTFWriter.c. The function has two
modes: Give back a hash name or the last part of the URL (which
normally is more readable).
- HTMLPutImg()
- New function to make it easier to put out an HTML <IMG>
tag.
- HTParseInet()
- Added one more parameter to tell whether it is a multihomed host or
not. (This is used in the host cache).
- HTInetStatus()
- Should no more be used directly but is called from HTErrorAdd so that
the message goes all the way back to the user
- HTError
- This typedef is now obsolete and will be removed in future
releases
- HTLoad()
- Added new parameter to HTLoad: BOOL keep_error_stack. If YES then the
error_stack is not cleared. This is used in redirection etc.
- HTLoadError()
- Because of the new HTError module,
this function in HTML.c is not needed anymore.
Bug Fixes
This is a list of fixed bugs from earlier versions.
- Memory faults in HTSimplify() in HTParse.c has been fixed
- README files in directory listings now know how to handle '<',
'>' and '&' correctly. Though the file still has to be Ascii.
- tmpnam is no more used in the Library because of problems on NeXT
platform. Instead a new function called HTFWriter_filename() in
HTFWriter.c is written.
- HTInputSocket_getCharacter now returns a int and not a char so that EOF
is no longer a member of the char set.
- HTMLGen_start_element() is only allowed to put extra '\n' in
<PRE> mode if it is between parameters in a tag
- Changed type of <IMG> into SGML_EMPTY so that it doesn't expect
end tag <\IMG>
- Nested <PRE> is no more a problem in HTMLGen_start_element.
- Removed all #elif as not all compilers on HPUX likes it.
- Changed HTChunk such that chunk->data is '\0' terminated at any
time. This actually makes HTChunkTerminate less needed but be aware that
HTChunk->size changes.
- Removed non-portable d_namlen field in HTMulti.
- Moved definition of NO_GROUPS to tch.html
- Moved definition of HT_MAX_PATH to tch.html
- Proxy server now closes connection in HTTP.c. This was only problem in
non-forking servers (VMS).
- Definition of HT_NO_DATA moved to HTUtils.html where the other return
codes are placed.
- Functions from HTAlert Module that
prompt the user don't get confused about ctrl-D anymore.
27 March 94 2.16beta VMS version
25 March 94 - 2.15
General Upgrade
International
Bug Fixes
- Bug fixed in HTFile.c prevented .multi multiformat links from working
under Solaris, maybe other SYSV.
- Bug fix in client HTTP: "Accept" line params preceded by ";" now as per
spec.
- Bug fixed in HTBTree.c that crashed for some large directories.
15 December 2.14vms
17 November 2.14
- Contains port to VMS.
- Bug fix in HTML generation -- line wrapping code produced garbage.
Affected servers working as gateways and also editors writing back
HTML.
- Buf fix: static string returned by crypt() was free() 'd.
4 Nov 93 Version 2.13
- Bug fix: FTP text transfer don't end when 8 bit characters used. Still
end on character -1. Thanks to Bjoern Stabell
(bjoerns@staff.cs.uit.no)
- A single function HTPromptUsernameAndPassword() so that GUIs can have a
single authentication dialog box.
- Extensive filename suffix recognition defaults.
11 Oct 93 Version 2.12
- Authroization in. See Ari's documentation. Everything is
back-compatible, but there are large extenions to the rule file syntax,
plus new ACL and protection setup files. Authorization is done by
password in the clear now, with hooks for public key later.
- Some other bug fixes. Not all the reported ones.
8 Sept 93 Version 2.11
- Binary transfer problems tackled in HTTP. Yukky problem of existing
illegal 0.9 server producing binary which looks like text is unsolved. No
problems with HTTP 1.0 transfer.
- Streams: end_document method removed. "Abort" method added as requested
at W5 -- use this when a pipe (stream stack) is broken by an error
prevents execution etc of partially written files for example.
- New stream HTNetToText for converting Net ASCII to local C
representation.
- Bug fix: Directories represented with anchors all with empty string (as
opposed to no) names: many NAME="" in anchors.
- Bug fix: application/octet-stream replaces application/binary as per
MIME.
- CSO Nameserver code to HTGopher added as Mosaic originally from ???.
(AS)
- Bug fix: HTTPD would return an old-style (non-MIME) response when
sending back a file in unrecognised format, evn if client was using HTTP
1.0.
Version 2.10 Not released due to WWWWW
- Bug fix: crashed with error message when doing a Gopher search.
- WAIS type "HTML" recognised as HTML. Other types treated as
application/binary.
30 November 1993, version 2.09a
- Bug fix: A space was not allowed befoe the tagcloser (>) of an end
tag. Now it is. Also (untested), empty close tags should be allowed a la
"<h1>heading</>". Not recommended, but in.
- Bug fix: HTML nesting stack overflow check.
- Bug fix: Compilation under IBM MVS didn't work.
23 November 1993, version 2.09
At last this stupid library is aware of content-transfer-encoding. When
defining file suffixes you must define not only the content-type (eg
application/postscript) but also the encoding (eg binary, or 7bit). The first
effect of this is to get the proper mode selected for FTP transfers. This
means you can do a
www -source ftp:/xx.yy.edu/pub/junk/foo.tar.Z > junk.tar.Z
and it will work as expected.
On the client side, you can define the presentation method for any given
MIME-style 'content type". This is done in the rule file too.
2.08
- You can define file suffix conventions in the server and/or client rule
files. This allows you to set up a server which for example, trateas .ai
files as application/postscript, etc, or specifies that .ME is generally
text.
- You can define how a new content type will be rendered in the rule file
of a client.
15 November 93, version 2.07
- If you telnet to the www client (-h option): 1. it is more secure: No
local file access. 2. you can use /etc/www-remote.url file to specify the
url of the home page for telnet users.
- Library uses fopen() rather than open(), allowing file access on
non-unix machines.
7 November 93, 2.06
- Check against local hostname in file access is now string
insensitive.
- HTML parser: entities were not expanded at outer level.
- HTTP client sends client name and version. Requires HTAppName
- FTP client fix: Continuation lines which do not have - in are now
handled properly as per the spec.
May 1993 version 2.05a
- Bug fix in directory reading of local files -- it didn't work! The
stopped the daemon working on directories.
- Bug fix in DIR handling for browers: tabs work again in directory
listsings.
22 April 1993 version 2.04
- WAIS handling code in library, no need to go through a gateway of you
compile with the right options abd link with freeWAIS. First version of
this, no bells or whistles.
- wwwsys.h systems specifics for SCO picked up from mosaic but directory
handling not fixed yet ...
20 April 1993 version 2.03c:
- Use of identifier "this" removed to prevent conflicts with C++
- _AIX cpp defined picked up for AIX.
- In networking code, no assumption that \n is 10 on even on ASCII
machines (for Mac/MPW).
- Server bug fix after Sebastian.Wilhelmi@isst.fhg.de -- exited with bad
status even if all OK.
19 April 1993 version 2.03b
- Distribution bug fix: s/Specific/All/ on line 2 of
WWW/All/Makefile.product
- SGML bug fix: treatment of entities was on when would be off and
vice-cversa.
- Sun binaries linked with -Bstatic to make them transportable
- Bug fix: Sometimes, client would ignore first part of returned
file.
17 Mar 93 Version 2.02-beta
- Bug fix: Falls back to old HTTP with servers which don't like the new
HTTP.
- BUILD file for easy installation of library, httpd and www
15 Mar 93 Version 2.0 alpha:
Incompatible library release has cleaned up interfaces. Developers read
the .h files! Version 2 libraries must be compiled with version 2 products
and vice-versa. Version 2 clients will access (most) version 1 servers OK,
version 2 servers will respond correctly to (all) version 1 clients.
- Bug fix: Gopher connections wasted socket numbers and eventually used
them all up. (Thanks Marc Andreessen)
- Rule file used by clients as well as servers.
- MIME parser takes content-type field from MIME messages and invokes
appropriate registerd presentation method for each type.
- Local and remote multiformat files.
- ***HTSearch and HTLoadRelative parameters changed! HTMainAnchor and
HTMainText globals are no longer used by the library.
- HTAccess package now registers known protocols in list.
- HT{G,S}etNewsHost available from HTNews module.
- SGML parser speeded up
- New software intrerface introduced: HTStructuredClass. This should make
use of the library easier with clients, and allow more code in common
between clients and servers.
- Hooks for handling new formats with other applications
- General hooks for status messages, user query, progress monitoring,
etc. (HTAlert module)
6 January 1993, Version1.1a
- Can revisit telnet nodes.
- Tn3270 access type accepted.
- FTP password for anonymous is now WWWuser@ withouyt a hostname, for
software on ftp.uu.net etc.
- Bug fix in HTML.c: Would crash when a list was the first visible
element in a text object.
- Added <PRE> tag as in new HTML
spec.
- Added numeric character reference handling for future use.
December 1992, Version 1.0c
- Fixed bug in FTP handling (FTP file retrieve put control connection in
bad state)
- Fixed bug in Gopher handling on non-ASCII platforms. Also, bug fix in
Gopher search of index whose name contained characters (like blanks)
escapes with %.
- Fixed bug in NEWS handling, failed on non-ASCII platforms.
November 1992 Version1.0b
- Fix some bugs in Make system.
- Memory bug fixed: On failure to connect to HTTP server, it would free()
an uninitialized pointer!
- Some trace messages were output to stdout instead of stderr
- Allow "ftp:" prefix on URL . Effect is currently equivalent to that of
the "file:" prefix.
- Local file access not allowed in secure mode. (telnet access was never
allowed in this mode). Secure mode is used for telnet server and mail
robot.
November 1992 version 1.0
- Library libwww.a made independently of browsers to save time and space
and to force good modularity
José Kahan,
@(#) $Id: History.html,v 1.42 2017/01/05 18:39:21 kahan Exp $