Announcing libwww-perl 0.20

Roy T. Fielding (fielding@simplon.ICS.UCI.EDU)
Thu, 21 Jul 1994 03:01:51 -0700 

Hello all,

I've generated a new version of libwww-perl and it is now available
at the usual locations.  The message below will be sent to www-talk
next week, after I get back from a friend's wedding this weekend.

The main purpose of this release is to support the public release of
MOMspider (also when I get back), but there are many other useful
improvements, fixes, and new features.


........Roy
====================================================================

Version 0.20 of libwww-perl is now available.

libwww-perl is a library of Perl4 packages which provides a simple
and consistent programming interface to the World-Wide Web.  This
library is being developed as a collaborative effort to assist the
further development of useful WWW clients and tools.

The distribution site and much more information about the libraries
can be found at 

       <http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/libwww-perl/>

and also at

       <ftp://liege.ics.uci.edu/pub/arcadia/libwww-perl/>


I am looking for more contributions to support the many protocols
and also to provide better HTML libraries.

A mailing list has been established for technical discussion about
libwww-perl, including problem reports, interim fixes, suggestions
for features, and contributions. The mailing list address is 

       libwww-perl@ics.uci.edu

and administrivia (including subscribe requests) should be sent to 

       libwww-perl-request@ics.uci.edu


Changes from version 0.12:

   Added the wwwbot.pl library and testbot program (by Brooks Cutter)
   for implementing the robot exclusion protocol.
   Added the testlinks program for yet another example of how useful
   programs can be easily implemented on top of libwww-perl -- it also
   tests just about every aspect of the request libraries.
   Added &www'set_def_header() and check_defaults() so that protocol
   header defaults (such as the HTTP From: header) can be set within
   the library and other default request headers can be set
   once by the client and effect all requests (e.g. User-Agent).
   Fixed the source of an annoying warning from "perl -w" in wwwhttp.pl.
   Moved some existing code in wwwmime.pl into a separate function
   set_content() which can set the "content-type" header for any given
   file extension.
   Added &wwwurl'get_site() for extracting the site name (server:port)
   from a given URL.
   Updated the get program to make use of the new interface changes.
   Changed the eval of &wwwscheme'request to a simpler &$routine call
   after a suggestion from Brooks.
   Fixed a bug in &wwwhtml'extract_links() which was causing a segmentation
   fault when a completely <element>-free file (i.e. a text file) was
   mistakenly extracted.


Have fun,

....Roy Fielding   ICS Grad Student, University of California, Irvine  USA
                   (fielding@ics.uci.edu)
    <A HREF="http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/grad/Software/fielding">About Roy</A>