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The main informational site for GNU Wget is now at
http://wget.addictivecode.com/; the Wget Wgiki.
--
The original motivation for starting a wiki for Wget was that I needed a
forum for collaboration on specifications and design for future features
in Wget, and particularly in what we've been calling Wget 2.0, the
next generation of Wget.
Features that have been (tentatively) suggested or planned for Wget
2.0 include:
* Support for multiple connections simultaneously
* Configuration options on a per-host and/or per-initial URI subpath
basis.
* Accept/reject (and others) based on MIME type.
* Support for the use of regular expressions.
* A recursive-fetch metadatabase, to save download information such as
mappings between local filenames and originating URIs, MIME types,
HTTP entity identifiers, etc.
* A plugin architecture.
* Support for parsing of non-HTML files for links to follow.
* Support for handing-off specific HTML elements to plugins for
special handling
* Support for extending Wget with new protocols
* Better encapsulation of the file-system, to hide local filename
restrictions and such from the download logic.
* Support for Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs).
* Some level of JavaScript support **
* Support for the Metalink format **
** For various reasons, JavaScript and Metalink support will probably
not be part of canonical Wget, but would take advantage of the plugin
architecture and be distributed separately from the core Wget source.
Development for these features might be separate from core Wget
development.
Some of these things necessitate a complete restructuring of Wget's
logic, very possibly a complete or near-rewrite. It is also possible
that the configuration and command-line interface syntaxes would need to
be reimagined, in which case a name change for the next generation
Wget might begin to show merit.
The feature specifications and design discussions for these elements
will live at http://wget.addictivecode.org/FeatureSpecifications. I have
started a few of them off, most still need to be started, and all need
help.
--
An aside: I do not want to give the idea that Wget is going to go from a
Swiss Army Knife to a Combination
Hand-pistol/tank/aircraft-carrier/missile-launch-silo ;)
As I see it, Wget's major boons have been its relatively small
footprint, it's speed and efficiency, and it's ability to (usually) Do
what I want. I do not wish to abandon these things. This was a major
factor in the decision to isolate features like Metalink and JavaScript
into plugins: with a plugin architecture, if the users /want/ the
Combination Hand-pistol/..., they can just load up the tank and
missile-silo modules! ;)
--
At any rate, I felt that having a wiki for discussion of these things
would prove invaluable, so I started work on this last week. But while I
was working on these things, it became more and more obvious how much of
a benefit it could be in serving as the main repository for even
general, non-developer-oriented information for Wget. This is a somewhat
abrupt turn from my desire to make the gnu.org site the main source of
information about Wget, but I believe it'll be much easier in the long
run.
Please do check the site out, and help to improve it! Most of content
from the old site should have moved to the wiki (the old site has
already been updated to direct readers there).
- http://wget.addictivecode.org/FeatureSpecifications
Home for various features that need sketching out (these are
intended to be informal specifications, not particularly rigorous;
just enough to know what we are doing).
- http://wget.addictivecode.org/Faq
The FAQ has been updated somewhat, probably worth looking over.
- http://wget.addictivecode.org/TitleIndex
We don't have that many pages yet; here's the full list. ;)
- --
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/
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