                                            W3C Reference Library Release Notes
   W3ClibwwwRELEASE
   
                           LIBRARY 5.0RELEASE NOTES
                                       
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   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 main new features are:
   
      Full HTTP/1.1 reference implementation
      
      Persistent cache manager
      
      Full support for PUT and POST
      
      Application profiles for easier setup
      
      Many new access methods for using libwww
      
      Simple Tcl interface
      
      Configuration based on autoconf
      
   The focus for version 5.0 of the W3C Reference Library is to provide a set
   of higher level, application specific APIs for accessing the Web. The
   Library contains a significantly improved 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. The Library now includes a
   set of profiles that helps the application, a Web client for example, to
   more easily use the full potential of the application independent Library
   core.
   
   The focus for version 5.0 of the W3C Reference Library is to provide a set
   of higher level, application specific APIs for accessing the Web. 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, GETand HEAD.
   
   It supports HTTP/1.1 including persistent connections, two-way PUT, the host
   header and many other features. This release contains a TCL add-on to the
   Robot example application and a beta version of a Deja GNU Test suite for
   the Library. There is also a sample PEP implementation, that although
   incomplete can give an idea of where we're headed using PEP.
   
   NOTE_Check out the latest  list of public functions_
   
RELEASE 5.0 SEPTEMBER 10 1996

   The 5.0 release has now a full persistent cache manager which works on Unix,
   and Windows NT. It has not been tested on other platforms, but it is based
   on strict ANSI C and has been designed to be portable.
   
  Bug Fixes
  
      Changed HTGetTmpNamenot to use tempnam() anymore as it caused problems.
      
      Added argument to HTParseTimeso 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-Matchand
      If-None-Matchand also for the _date_ validators If-Modified-Sinceand
      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-Controlheader and Connectionheader. 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 connectionheader with the closedirective.
      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_PERSISTENTis now obsolete and should be replaced by HT_PENDING
      
      The HTChannelModeenumeration describing the flow of a channel has been
      replaced by HTTransportModeas 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 Proxyredirections
      
      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 _REENTRANTdefine)
      
      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 HTLoadStartand HTLoadTerminatefunctions
   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
   HTLoadStartand HTLoadTermintefunctions 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 BASEtag and LINKtag
      
      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
      loop from HTEvntrg, you must register it explicitly with HTEventrgInit.
      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.
      
   
   ___________________________________
   
                                         Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, libwww@w3.org,
                                                                               
           @(#) $Id: ReleaseNotes.html,v 1.38 1996/09/10 02:02:06 frystyk Exp $
                                                                               
   
