-*-text-*-
This is Prospero release Alpha.5.2a. This release has had a number of
changes made to it since Beta.5.1. If you are running an archie
server, then you almost certainly really want to install your server
under Beta.5.1, not Alpha.5.2a.
Installation instructions can be found in the file INSTALLATION_s for
the client and server, or INSTALLATION_u for the client only.
The most important new features in this version of Prospero are:
(a) A menu-based browser client, similar to the Gopher client
(b) A gateway server which makes all of Gopherspace available through
Prospero queries.
(c) A menu-based browser API interface library to Prospero, which allows
one to easily write new browsers that use Prospero to make their underlying
calls.
(d) A new per-server password authentication mechanism, which provides
far stronger authentication than before for sites that are not running
Kerberos.
(e) ACLs have now been implemented for all Prospero objects, not just
for links and directories. You can now control who can set
{\sc object} attributes on files and directories.
The menu browser client can be invoked as 'menu'. It's mostly
self-documenting, with some additional documentation in the user's
manual. It provides a much needed alternative interface to Prospero.
If you compile the Prospero clients in the easiest way you can, you
can start it up with 'menu' and explore the default menu at the USC
Information Sciences Institute guest site.
The menu-based browser supports all of the basic Gopher types:
searches, text files, data files, and portals (what Gopher calls
telnet sessions). It does not yet support sophisticated display of
binary image files, reading Postscript or MIME documents, playing
sounds, or automatic decoding of uuencoded, compressed, or tarred
files. These enhancements will be added shortly; the protocol
definitions for them have already been made.
The gateway server is part of the Prospero server, and translates
Prospero queries into Gopher protocol queries.
The latest release also features:
-- Improvements to the server code so that old xarchie clients don't
break (see the CHANGES file).
-- Messages to the Prospero server may now be of arbitrary length.
-- An expanded library reference manual
-- The user's manual has been updated to reflect the current version
of Prospero. A few things still need to be documented; those are
noted in the user's manual.
-- Improvements to the Kerberos version 5 support
-- Caching of native directories and reliability improvements to the
directory writing code. OBJECT attributes are cached. The
directory server now treats all links and objects equally, so you
can attach attributes to native links and objects too. The only
exception is that you still can't delete native links from a
directory. (If you want this feature available, write to us; we'd
like to know if there's any demand for it.) The directory server
now always tells the truth about whether a native link is a FILE or
a DIRECTORY.
This release of Prospero includes a standalone client to query archie
servers. It is standalone in the sense that, once compiled, it does
not require Prospero to be installed on the host from which it is to
be used. It is installed by default when you build the Prospero
utilities. As distributed, no default server is configured for the
archie client. To specify a default, edit the line ARCHIE_HOST in
include/archie.h.
Look at the file CHANGES in this directory for a list of recent changes to
Prospero.
Look at the file SUPPORTED in this directory for a list of which
machines and operating systems Prospero has been compiled on and of
which are supported.
