From: SMTP%"VMSGopher-L@trln.lib.unc.edu" 31-MAY-1995 17:26:31.93 To: EVERHART CC: Subj: Re: Use of .multi with httpd X-ListName: Gopher for VMS implementation and testing Warnings-To: <> Errors-To: owner-vmsgopher-l@trln.lib.unc.edu Sender: owner-vmsgopher-l@trln.lib.unc.edu Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 16:57:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Foteos Macrides Reply-To: VMSGopher-L@trln.lib.unc.edu Subject: Re: Use of .multi with httpd To: VMSGopher-L@trln.lib.unc.edu Message-ID: <01HR5RVNBOKY0000N3@SCI.WFEB.EDU> X-VMS-To: IN%"VMSGopher-L@trln.lib.unc.edu" X-VMS-Cc: MACRIDES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Alan Hirsh wrote: >Can you point me to where I can find more explanation of .multi ? It would >appear to have something to with the situation where I have versions of a >document in text, WordPerfect, Postscript, MS Write (e.g. design.txt, >design.wp, design.ps, design.wri), and users using different browsers and >hardware, say VMS lynx with VT420s which can read .txt and .wp PC Netscape >where they can read everything Unix Netscape where they can read .txt and .ps > >Is there a way I can set up a single anchor > ... >and have the browser and server decide which is the "best" form of the >document to use depending on how the user has set up the browser ? The CERN server's "multi" file handling was fixed up by Ari to work beatifully on Unix, but just before he joined the WWW freeware developer brain drain to Netscape, so he never got to document it adequately. I fixed it up to work on VMS as well in the code set on our http and gopher servers. Basically, it depends on clients including preference extensions in their Accept and Accept-Language headers, as described in the IETF Working Group's drafts: Linkname: IETF - Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Working Group URL: http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/ If you use filename.multi instead of a real entension for the file in the URL, it will check both the Accept and Accept-Language preferences indicated by the client, and return the best match to a weighted product of the client's Content-type, Content-encoding, and language preferences. If you specify the expension, it will return the best match to the weighted product of the client's Content-encoding and language preferences, and you don't need to add the .multi extension flag. In your server's configuration file, the AddType (suffix) and AddEncoding rules set up the multi file handling in conjunction with setting up the extension-to-Content-type-and-Content-encoding conversions, and the AddLanguage rules set up the language preference handling, as described in: Linkname: Syntax of CERN server configuration (rule) file URL: http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/User/Config/Overview.html but on VMS, you use '_' instead '.' as the language extension token, to get around VMS's restriction to a single dot if file specs. In case it's helpful, I put the stuff I was using when adding Accept-Language preference declarations to Lynx in a public directory on our CERN server: http://www.wfeb.edu/www/multi/ Use that URL for a directory build to access the README and any of the multiple language files via the explicit URLs it returns. Then use: http://www.wfeb.edu/www/multi/gopher.multi or: http://www.wfeb.edu/www/multi/gopher.html to get the .hlp file for the gopher client in your preferred language automagically (at least, with Lynx2-3-fm 8-). >If it did work with the CERN httpd, would it also work with the NCSA one >which accesses the same documents where they are mirrored to another site? I don't know anything concrete about the NCSA server. Fote ========================================================================= Foteos Macrides Worcester Foundation MACRIDES@SCI.WFEB.EDU 222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545 =========================================================================