>Well, I think it would take a good quality patch with documentation
>changes to describe the new config attribute, plus a good argument
>for why the change should be incorporated. I have yet to see one.
>Making htsearch generate bad URIs for the sake of not having to make a
>trivial change to your wrapper script just doesn't seem that wise to me.
Before I develop a patch, I'll try to make the argument....
The argument is that what "site developers" want is "search", and they
already have a variety of hoops to jump through: configure a webserver,
develop scripts, and implement the search engine. We're not all using
Apache, and we're not all using PHP. But we are using a variety of
frameworks that we may or may not have the ability to change.
For example, my favorite webserver is aolserver/opennsd, an open source
webserver that features very fast page serving, incredibly easy db
connectivity and db connection pooling, and multithreaded tcl.
I would like to develop a generalized htdig module to fit the
openacs/opennsd toolkit. Such a module would be a tcl script wrapping
calls to htsearch. As it happens, because of the semicolon/ampersand
issue, I cannot at the moment create this module without creating either a
patch to htDig or a patch to opennsd and other portions of the openacs toolkit.
Myself, I have the ability to patch either, and manage that patch, but
understandably, I would like to create a module that others could download
that would not require patching either the webserver or htDig. I don't
mind making folks turn on some parameter within a config file, so my
preferred course would be to convince the developers of one project to
incorporate the patch (for my users) and maybe add a config parameter.
So why patch htDig and not AOLserver/OpenACS/OpenNSD?
1. Weak answer: Convenience and stability: the patch (appears to be)
pretty local to one function within Display.cc, within AOLserver there is
one function and within OpenACS there are about ten functions that would
require changing to understand the use of semicolons.
2. Stronger answer: Standards. As you mention, "there's no question that
the ampersand is still the standard...". (I understand the importance of
the word "still" suggesting that that may not be true in the future.)
I will suggest that AOLserver/OpenNSD is not the only webserver that
understands ampersands at the moment but that does not understand
semicolons. The question becomes: must all webservers come up to the level
of the protocol where not only the minimal standard is supported, but all
recommendations are supported to use htDig, or is there somewhat that htDig
can be made to support all webservers easily and still support the highest
conforming webservers?
I suggest there is, and that a patch to htDig to use ampersand separators
depending on a configuration item would be useful to the general population.
Okay then, that's the argument....
Thanks,
Jerry
=====================================================
Jerry Asher [EMAIL PROTECTED]
1678 Shattuck Avenue Suite 161 Tel: (510) 549-2980
Berkeley, CA 94709 Fax: (877) 311-8688
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