ANNOUNCEMENT of W3C Reference Library 3.1

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	    World-Wide Web Consortium Software Distribution

  The W3C Reference Library is a general code base written in C. It can
  be used as a basic tool for writing both single threaded and multi
  threaded Web applications like clients, servers, proxies etc. It
  contains reference code for accessing HTTP, FTP, Gopher, News, WAIS,
  Telnet servers, and the local file system and a lot functionality to
  handle data objects rendered in various media types.

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This is the announcement of the version 3.1 release of the W3C
Reference Library going into public domain. The code word for this
release is support for remote collaborate work where people can use
HTTP and the Web as a remote authoring environment.

In addition to the new set of features and functionality this release
also is the first example of source code distributed under the W3C
conditions. This means that the code has been available to consortium
members one month from the official release date which was July 14,
but now is going into public domain. The Library is now under MIT
copyright and the copyright statement is available in the source
distribution file or at

	http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/COPYRIGHT.html

The source code can be found at:

	http://www.w3.org/hypertext/Dist/

Note that there is both a "zip" file, a "gzip'ed tar" file, and a
"compressed tar" file

You can find the new documentation from the status page which is the
top-node for the Library

	http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Library/

As usual, we also have a "Internals and Programmer's Guide" which is
available at

	http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Library/User/Guide/

Another new formality is that everybody who makes modifications,
contributions etc. and wishes to incorporate them as part of the W3C
software distribution must sign a form that gives MIT the permissions
to use the contributions under the terms of the W3C software
distribution. This form is available at 

	http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/PATCHES.html

The Library is known to compile on Sun4, Solaris, HP Snake, NeXTSTEP,
Ultrix, OSF/1, Linux, SGI, AIX, NetBSD, and Windows NT. There is a
special README-WinNT file at the same location as the distributions
files explaining how to compile on an NT box. Please have a look at
the list of supported platforms for more information:

        http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Library/User/Platform/

Here you will find many hints and ideas about the specific platforms.
Even though the Library and the Line Mode Browser is known to compile
on a Windows NT platform it is not guaranteed to run out of the box on
a Windows 3.1 with Win32s added and it will not work on a 16 bit
version of Windows without modifications. However, we are very
interested in hearing about work in this direction.

Diffs are available at

	http://www.w3.org/hypertext/Dist/diffs

As usual, the Line Mode Browser is also released in order to show how
the library can be used. This release is described in its own
announcement.

Please send any comments and questions to

        libwww@w3.org

or to the mailing list

	www-lib@w3.org

-- have fun --


-- 

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, <frystyk@w3.org>
World-Wide Web Consortium, MIT/LCS
45 Technology Square, Cambridge MA 02139, USA

Received on Monday, 14 August 1995 13:01:58 UTC