An Alpha release of version 5 of the Prospero file system is now
available by anonymous FTP from PROSPERO.ISI.EDU in the file
pub/prospero/prospero.tar.Z (840 blocks).  It can also be obtained
through Prospero itself from /releases/prospero/prospero.tar.Z

The most important change since the last major release is that the
protocol has been significantly revised.  Quoting, a feature that the
previous version of the protocol mentioned but which was never
implemented, is now fully supported.  This means that filenames and
object names with spaces and other strange characters in their names
now work.  This is important, since Prospero is being increasingly used to
index and organize other types of data than UNIX files.  The server
will still speak the older version of the protocol to older clients.

Other significant changes since the last major release include the
following

 . The code is now in ANSI C.

 . Remote modification and retrieval of attributes on links and files
   is now fully supported.  Attributes have changed significantly.
   You can modify attributes through the new set_atr client program or
   through the pset_at() and pset_linkat() library routines.
   Attributes that happen to be stored on the VLINK structure (such as
   the link name) are now treated the same as all other attributes and
   can be modified with the same commands used to modify other
   attributes.

 . The MAGIC-NUMBER mechanism has been generalized into an ID
   mechanism.  This allows Prospero to be used to experiment with
   unique document identifiers (currently the subject of an IETF
   working group).  

 . The ACCESS-METHOD attribute has been generalized.  It no longer
   assumes that the host providing directory information about an
   object is the same host from which the object should be retrieved. 

 . Support for the GOPHER access method (at the moment, only on
   EXTERNAL links) is now included.  This means that objects of
   interest you discover through Gopher can be added to the Prospeo
   namespace. 

 . Filters have been generalized considerably.  This release includes
   support for PREDEFINED filters that run on the server side.  Such
   filters solve the security and portability problems that have
   plagued filters in the past.  A later release will come with a
   number of predefined standard server and client filters.

 . Various bug fixes and fixes for some machine dependencies

 . Additional features in the Asynchronous Reliable Delivery Protocol
   (ARDP; formerly the Reliable Datagram Protocol) that support new
   features in the archie server and client, such as the ability for a
   client to ask for how long it must wait until its query will be
   serviced, and the ability to cancel pending requests.  The ARDP
   library is now a separate component from the rest of prospero, and
   we encourage developers to use it in their applications.

 . Kerberos Version 5 is now available as an authentication mechanism.

 . It is now possible for the same binaries to support users running C
   shell variants and Bourne shell variants.  

 . The server now can provide a message of the day, and the client
   libraries provide support for retrieving it.

 . The protocol manual has been considerably expanded and improved.

 . Introduced in the last beta release and still present:  a
   standalone client to query archie servers, and an alternative ls
   program (ALS). 

The release has been tested on Suns running SunOS, DEC MIPS machines
running ULTRIX, and HP 9000 series 700 workstations running HP-UX.

Please report bugs to bug-prospero@ISI.EDU

We would like to thank the following people for bug fixes, for porting
Prospero to other machine types (and feeding back the changes), or for
adding new features.

Eric Anderson           SURAnet
Joseph Boykin           Encore Computer Corporation
Steve Cliffe            University of Wollongong
John Curran 		NSF Network Service Center (NNSC)
Alan Emtage             Bunyip Information Systems
George Ferguson         Univeristy of Rochester
Jonathan Kamens		MIT Project Athena
Brendan Kehoe           Cygnus
Case Larsen		Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Gaute Nessan            University of Tromsoe, Norway
Rainer Orth             University of Cologne, Germany

  -- Clifford Neuman and Steven Augart