CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Tim Berners-Lee/CERN Minutes of the World Wide Web BOF (WWW) Status Tim Berners-Lee mentioned a few recent developments: o NCSA's "Mosaic" WWW client for X11 agreed by the meeting to be the best information access tool to date. This is at an advanced beta state (version 0.12). FTP pickup rate for this product now exceeds that for NCSA telnet. o A Windows client for MS-DOS machines exists, the equivalent of XMosaic but for PCs. It is user configurable and looks good. A problem with release is that a runtime license is needed for the TCP stack used (Distinct). o The growth rate of access to the CERN server has continued to double every four months for the last two years with no sign of tapering off. Man Pages on the Web Steve Romig of Ohio State was congratulated on his server server for unix manual pages. This is a good example of an automatic server (a perl script in this case) which provides a powerful data access. Steve agreed to make his tools available on the web. Web Agenda There was a discussion of things which should be done to make it easier for the Web to spread. These include: o Better packaging of CERN software, in particular the server: simpler installation, irrelevant file hiding, etc. o Licensing of CERN software: There was deep concern expressed that investment by others in WWW related projects would be jeopardized later by CERN's licensing conditions, in the way that the University of Minnesota's have pulled the rug out from under the Gopher project. The General Public (Gnu-style) license was not so acceptable as pure public domain code. The Group was quite intent on solving this very quickly. o A better vt100 full-screen browser is needed for a large dial-up user base. 1 NCSA is likely to bring out a public domain very simple to install server, as a partial solution to the first two issues issues. There was a proposal to create a small group to implement the vt100 client, which formed and aims to implement the product for public release. vt100 client: [Note: Minutes after the BOF we received an announcement of the ``Lynx'' 2.0 beta release by Lou Montulli. This may solve the problem or at least provide a base. Lynx is a vt100 full screen hypertext WWW client. Check it out by telnetting to ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu and logging in as www. Source and binaries are available by anon FTP from acs220.cc.ukans.edu] Standards The three standards important for WWW at this stage are: 1. The Universal Resource Locators spec defines the addressing syntax used by WWW. This is to be released immediately as an Internet-Draft for the standards track. 2. The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) specification defines the transport format for menus, hypertext and general on-line documentation. This must be specified at RFC standards track level in order to be submitted as a MIME content-type. This in turn is necessary as HTTP uses MIME format for returned multimedia messages, and we want it to stay MIME-compliant. HTML will therefore be released as an Internet Draft as soon as possible. 3. HTTP is the access protocol used by WWW servers. An extended (back-compatible) version is in use in the 2.0 and above CERN software. This is quite open to extension and so any comment on the protocol should be discussed on the www-talk list. It was agreed to put these documents through the IIIR Working Group whose Chair, Chris Weider, has agreed to oversee their passage. The BOF will not, therefore, meet again or propose a WWW working group. Mailing lists and Newsgroup To join the technical mailing list, send a mail message to: www-talk-request@info.cern.ch for human attention. There is a newsgroup currently being formed. Its name is comp.infosystems.www. To vote on its creation, please send mail 2 to either: www-yes@msen.com or www-no@msen.com depending whether you wish the group to be formed or not. Attendees Vikas Aggarwal aggarwal@jvnc.net N. Akiko Aizawa akiko@nacsis.ac.jp Harald Alvestrand Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.no Robert Beer r-beer@onu.edu Richard Bjers rich.bjers@uc.edu Thomas Brisco brisco@pilot.njin.net Sandy Bryant slb@virginia.edu Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu David Conklin conklin@jvnc.net Naomi Courter naomi@concert.net Brent Curtiss bcurtiss@magnuss.ocs.ohio-state.edu Mark Davis-Craig mad@merit.edu Alan Emtage bajan@bunyip.com Roger Fajman raf@cu.nih.gov Jill Foster Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk Ned Freed ned@innosoft.com Marcello Frutig frutig@rnp.impa.br Jim Fullton Jim.Fullton@cnidr.org Maria Gallagher maria@nsipo.nasa.gov Kevin Gamiel kevin.gamiel@concert.net Joan Gargano jcgargano@ucdavis.edu Greg Gicale gicale@ohio.gov Terry Gray gray@cac.washington.edu Susan Harris srh@umich.edu Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu Russ Hobby rdhobby@ucdavis.edu Ellen Hoffman ellen@merit.edu Susan Horvath shorvath@merit.edu Inna Il'yasova ilyasova@meg.uncg.edu Lenore Jackson jackson@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov Neil Katin katin@eng.sun.com John Klensin klensin@infoods.unu.edu Jim Knowles jknowles@binky.arc.nasa.gov Edward Krol e-krol@uiuc.edu Hock-Koon Lim lim@po.cwru.edu Daniel Long long@nic.near.net David Lovering lovering@bldrdoc.gov Bruce Mackey brucem@cinops.xerox.com Samir Malak malaks@alice.uncg.edu Kent Malave kent@bach.austin.ibm.com Janet L. Marcisak jlm@ftp.com April Marine april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov 3 Jerry Martin jerry+@osu.edu Michael Mealling michael@fantasy.gatech.edu Mitra mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu Masataka Ohta mohta@cc.titech.ac.jp Pete Percival percival@indiana.edu David Perkins dperkins@synoptics.com Marsha Perrott mlp+@andrew.cmu.edu Mark Prior mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au Robert Raisch raisch@ora.com Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Francois Robitaille francois.robitaille@crim.ca Carl Schoeneberger 70410.3563@Compuserve.com Jennifer Sellers sellers@nsipo.nasa.gov Jane Smith Jane.Smith@cnidr.org Mark Smith mcs@umich.edu Larry Snodgrass snodgrass@bitnic.educom.edu Craig Todd ctodd@desire.wright.edu Matt Tuttle snodgras@cren.net Gregory Vaudreuil gvaudre@cnri.reston.va.us Ruediger Volk rv@informatik.uni-dortmund.de Janet Vratny janet@apple.com Chris Weider clw@merit.edu Les Wibberley lhw24@cas.org 4