Re: More searchers (was WWW general information request)

lilley ([email protected])
Thu, 12 Jan 1995 12:28:54 +0100


Nick Arnett said:

> We have a searcher agent for general Web beginner information at
> <URL:http://www.verity.com:8089/?exiturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.verity.com%2Fvlibs
> earch.html&qparser=simple&query=www-FAQ-list>.
> [...]
> You can enter searcher agent names and additional queries from a generic
> search screen at <URL:http://www.verity.com/vlibsearch.html>... saving all
> of the escaping and such. On that screen, you'd use "www-FAQ-list <and>
> server" for the query above.

I'm glad there is a simple URL option for the entry point. The chance
of a beginner searching the FAQ using the two-line URL above is, I
imagine quite remote... at this stage in Web development, there is
still a need for URLs to be human-readable and human-understandable.

Would it not be possible to advertise some simple URLs, on the default port,
for example http://www.verity.com/beginner that generate a 302 moved
temporarily redirect (so the client continues to use the original URL)
to the full gobbledegook on port 8089 ?

Incidentally, I note that the server on port 8089 does not support HEAD -
it does a GET (and, in this example, returns a document somewhat past
it's sell by date ;-)

cguhpc [54]: telnet www.verity.com 8089
Trying...
Connected to ftp.verity.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
User-Agent: by-hand/1.0

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-type: text/html
Expires: Monday, 1-Jan-90 00:00:00 GMT <== really?

<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>Verity Web Server</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H5>Verity Virtual Library of World-Wide Web Documents</H5>
<H1>Verity Web Server</H1>
[ and so on]
</BODY></HTML>

Is this intentional behaviour? And why no Server: field? Optional, I know,
but recommended.

--
Chris Lilley
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