extended attributes

["J. F. Wittenberger" <jerry pfirsich compot com>]

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Hi all,

I just realized from one of the recent postings what extended
attributes are all about.  Uhm, I don't like duplication others work,
but it looks as if EAs are sort of part of my current project.  I'll
append a draft of the announcement to be published one of these days.

I see that my staff is an overkill for just implementing EAs,
especially because the current implementation is not fast enough.  But
given a faster access protocol (it's not tied to the http currently
used) like say NFS or maybe LDAP (dunno much about that) and impl it
could be a choice.  Admitted, we had to skip certain features or would
you like to read your just written gif back as png? :-)

Maybe we should look at each others code and see if we can merge
effort!  Unfortunatly I'm very bussy these days, so please expect slow
progress at my side, sorry.

/Jerry

- ----------
I'm proud to announce a new project coming out of the prototype stage:

			    W E B S T A R

Pronounced Web-Store.  Nomen est omen.

Key features:
  * data is stored into kind a virtual store freeing users freeing the
  end user from obviously too complicated file system issues ("Which
  dir do I have to put my public html file in?":-)
  * offers *all* the unix power of cgi-alike dynamic pages to *any*
  user without risk to the host system
  * For the lawyers: documents know a finalized state giving them an
  archival value.
  * Access control takes place on a per page basis unter control of
  the user including introduction of sub-users
  * one can't accidently delete files which are referenced somewhere,
  no need to care about deleting files at all
  * connected servers could have robots actually travel among them.
  * a back link to the referer pages, will give you different search
  algorithms (Who, has written which words about this page?).
  * The back link will also be used to make sure that even
  external data aren't lost when the author looses the interest.
  The page will migrate to the interested referer.

  * And best of all: you don't need another client program.  Any
  Web-Browser/Editor does.

Try the current version working at
		  http://pfirsich.compot.com/public/webstar/

or fetch the software from
http://pfirsich.compot.com/~jerry/software/webstar/

The current version is 0.1.3. Expect it to break down.  It's merly a
proof of concept; I'd like to start some discussion about it and the
ideas behind it, not to provide a ready to use software package.

By now you work with a cgi implemented server directly.  Future
versions will silently plug in as a proxy.  Back links, while beeing a
design concept are not implemented yet.

I'm aware that webstar adresses a lot of areas already adressed
elsewhere.  Webstar is *not* going to render them obsolete, it tries
to provide a frame work to them.  The relation to those large scale
projects is a) simplicity and a bit of philosophy and b) similar to
the difference between X.400 and SMTP.  I guess X.400 is better.

Who could be interested?
ISPs, Web space providers, administrators:
  No need to check every cgi script.  Garbage collected
  pages. Simplified administration.
Users:
  Simplified publishing of web pages from the browser.  Aktive
  documents.  No useless files.  No broken links. No ftp to learn.
Lawyers:
  Final documents are protected against forge by cryptographic checks
  proofing that neither the author, date, actual content nor the
  dynamic behavior will ever change.  Documents can't be forged. ( ;-) )
Information brokers
  Travel the graph back to the previos node.  Use the whole document
  or a certain part of it as a new symbol.

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