Hi, In the recent Knesset Internet Committee discussion, Avi Cohen, CEO of Machba, claimed that the problems of software compatibility with Microsoft products is insurmountable. Here is the story of one such "insurmountable" problem, with one of Machba's own system.
Two of the important services offered by Machba are the nation-wide library catalogs, the Israeli Union List (http://libnet1.ac.il/~libnet/uli/) and Israeli Union List of Serials (http://libnet1.ac.il/~libnet/uls/). These sites, based on the ALEPH500 software produced by Ex Libris Ltd. (http://www.aleph.co.il), work only with Microsoft Internet Explorer. To quote their information page, "Currently, the ULI web catalog supports only Microsoft's Internet Explorer� browser, version 5 or higher" (http://libnet1.ac.il/~libnet/uli/uli01_14-2.htm). Indeed, with none-MSIE browsers, the Hebrew is messed up. A little investigation shows that this problem is completely server-side. Apparently the Aleph server checks the User-Agent HTTP header, and if it agent is not MSIE then it mangles the page, producing incorrect data which is obviously misrendered by any browser. The attached message explains this in detail; the related samples can be found here: http://dl.tromer.org/temp/test1.gif http://dl.tromer.org/temp/test1.html http://dl.tromer.org/temp/test2.gif http://dl.tromer.org/temp/test2.html I sent a detailed technical account of the matter to Aviva Shichor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Aleph coordinator at Haifa University. (she's the contact given at the ULS information page). Following an irrelevant response, I phoned her on 22 May 2002. Her answers were highly nonprofessional, culminating in her explaining that she "never liked Unix" and that she doesn't "care what operating system I use -- this system works with Windows". She refused to hear an explanation of the technical details, directing me to Ex Libris but refusing to contact them herself or to suggest whom to speak to. Following that, I sent the attached message to Elhanan Adler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Director of MALMAD. It was promptly and courteously acknowledged by Shmuel Moss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, System Librarian, who forwarded it on to Ex Libris. During the 7 weeks that passed no progress is evident, even though it's probably just a matter of commenting out an easily located piece of rogue code. From the above, the following is obvious: Ex Libris Ltd. did not make a reasonable effort to support non-MSIE browsers (a _charitable_ explanation would be that they tried incompetently and messed things up), and MALMAD did not list support for non-MSIE browsers among the requirements of the new Aleph system, or did not enforce this requirement. Specifically, it seems reasonable to conclude that Machba, or at least MALMAD, does not care about support for non-MSIE browsers. The opinion of the Machba CEO, as expressed in the Knesset committee, should be seen in this light. Additional inquiries concerning the specific technical problem may help hasten its resolution, so please consider making them. Regards, Eran Tromer
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Hello,
I would appreciate your help in the following matter.
I am trying to access ULS and ULI using Unix-based browsers that have
Unicode support (e.g., Mozilla, Netscape6+, Konqueror). I have reached
some curious conclusions which you may find interesting. The bottom line
is as follows: these browsers could work perfectly with the new Aleph
system, and the only reason they do not is that some server-side
component of the Aleph system sends incorrect data if the client is not
Internet Explorer. This is a bug in the Aleph system: if it treated
Mozilla and Internet Explorer *equally*, then both would work.
At the Weizmann Institute there are many Unix users who currently do not
have a convenient method to use ULS and ULI, because Microsoft Internet
Explorer is not available on these platforms. I think that a
country-wide academic service should support all of its users.
Fortunately, my results show that this can be easily achieved -- all
that is required is disabling the incorrect browser-specific code in the
server.
Details follow.
At first I tried using Mozilla normally, and indeed the Hebrew was
garbled (see attached screenshot: test1.gif). However, looking at the
actual HTML code sent by the Alpeh server shows that what was sent is
not valid Unicode: inside every "<x>...</x>" element, where there should
be Unicode there is garbage (see attached test1.html).
I then tried a little experimentation. In every HTTP web request, the
browser sends a "User-Agent" string describing the browser version.
Usually this is used just for informative purposes (logging and
debugging). None the less, I told my Mozilla to identify itself as
Interet Explorer by sending the appropriate User-Agent string rather
than the default one. With this change, everything worked correctly (see
attached test2.gif). Looking at the sent HTML (test2.html), it's seen to
be *different* than what was sent before, and indeed contains correct
Unicode.
It thus seems that the Aleph server examines the User-Agent string, and
it thinks that the browser is not Internet Explorer then it
intentionally sends different (and apparently garbled) data.
I also used a command-like utility ('wget' on Linux) to retrieve the
pages with different User-Agent settings, and got similar results -- the
server sends correct data when it thinks it is contacted by Internet
Explorer, and incorrect data otherwise.
Technical details: both screenshots are of Mozilla 1.0RC2 (latest
version, equivalent to Netscape 7.0 beta) running on on Windows.
I also tested with Mozilla 0.9.5 (roughly equivalent to Netscape 6.0)
and with Konqueror 3.0.0 -- the conclusions were identical. To change
the User-Agent settings I used UABar (http://uabar.mozdev.org), which is
the funny toolbar you see in the screenshot. The URL seen is:
http://aleph.libnet.ac.il/ALEPH/5L6NTLTF5JP1Q7VK2B8S7QURNL331C13M93GPT9RF9LREJV985-07786/full-set/000001-999
For Mozilla, I did the testing both on Windows (Windows 2000
Professional) and on Unix (RedHat Linux 7.3), and again the conclusions
were identical. Specifically, Mozilla on Linux indeed dislayed
everything correctly when the Aleph server was tricked into sending
proper Unicode.
This issue is troublesome for many (myself included). Since technically
it is easily corrected, I hope you will be able to get it fixed. Also,
in general I urge you to consider the convenience of non-Windows users,
now that there exist many browsers with excellent standard compliance
and full Hebrew support.
Sincerely,
Eran Tromer
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