On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, martin reed wrote:
> I was wondering if MetaCard had any planned support for the https
> protocol, or whether this latest beta version of 2.3 can support https via
> sockets. If this is not the case, does anyone have any pointers or other
> information regarding ssl and https and how it works, such that it might
> be possible to implement such a protocol into MetaCard? If I understand
> correctly, web browsers use some sort of encryption scheme to encrypt all
> information when sending to secure servers. Is this encryption method
> available publicly (obviously the decryption would not be)?
Both methods are publicly available, it's the keys that are kept
secret. Support for https is on the feature-request list. It should
be possible to do it using the sockets in 2.3, but you'd probably need
to write an external to do the encryption/decryption (this part could
certainly be done in MetaTalk, but it would be some pretty hairy
scripting).
> Also, I have tried using sockets to connect to a port 23 (telnet) before,
> and this does not seem to function properly. Is there any reason why this
> should not work?
Maybe. Telnet is among the more complex of Internet protocols (I
would even go so far as to call it baroque) and I'm not sure it will
even be possible to support it completely until the MetaTalk sockets
API includes support for out-of-band data. At the very least, you'll
have to fake out the terminal type negotiation that takes place at the
start of each telnet session. If you're interested in pursuing this,
I recommend reading http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc764.html. That
article, like most protocol specs, is pretty opaque and you'll
probably have to read it several times before you start to understand
how it's supposed to work. If during implementation you discover some
key feature is missing from MetaCard's sockets implementation, just
ask for it: Adding support for what is needed to implement these
second-tier Internet protocols is a very high priority for the 2.4
release.
> BTW, I'm a new MetaCard user, but I have found it to be incredible. The
> entire concept of the web is fantastic, but the real-world implementation
> leaves so much to be desired. The ease that MetaCard provides in using the
> strengths of the internet, while avoiding the nusiance of the web and html
> itself is incredible. I hope MetaCard continues to take full advantage of
> all the internet has to offer. In a perfect world, the index.html's of the
> world could be replaced with index.mc's. :)
There's a lot of power in the new sockets support. Unfortunately
you'll probably need all of it because Internet programming is
generally very difficult ;-)
Regards,
Scott
> Thanks,
> ReeD.
>
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>
********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
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