From owner-new-httpd Sun Apr 2 04:11:34 1995 Return-Path: owner-new-httpd Received: by taz.hyperreal.com (8.6.10/8.6.5) id EAA11842; Sun, 2 Apr 1995 04:11:34 -0700 Received: from cass41 by taz.hyperreal.com (8.6.10/8.6.5) with SMTP id EAA11837; Sun, 2 Apr 1995 04:11:31 -0700 Received: from cass39.ast.cam.ac.uk by cass41 with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #9) id m0rvNZ2-00004eC; Sun, 2 Apr 95 12:11 BST Received: by cass39.ast.cam.ac.uk (Smail3.1.29.1 #9) id m0rvNZ0-0003p6C; Sun, 2 Apr 95 12:11 BST Message-Id: Date: Sun, 2 Apr 95 12:11 BST From: drtr@ast.cam.ac.uk (David Robinson) To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com Subject: Re: problem with content negotiation ? Content-Length: 1662 Sender: owner-new-httpd@hyperreal.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com On Wed, 29 Mar 95 16:51:30 EST, Robert S. Thau wrote: >... >(Incidentally, I got rid of a lot of problems I was having along these >lines with emacs backups by having MultiViews punt any file which is >IndexIgnored --- note the call to ignore_entry from http_mime.c. I don't like you using any Index config variable for MultiViews. In fact, for some time I have really disliked the design of httpd in this area. The generation of an 'index' for a directory that does not contain an index.html is something that should be completely separate from httpd. Even if the code for it is actually included with httpd, it should logically be separate. Specifically: * Index options should not be read from the standard httpd .htaccess files, but from separate per-directory .htindex files. Almost the only use I ever make of .htaccess files is to add comments to the index. If these comments were read from a .htindex file _only_ in the specified directory, then I could disable the use of .htaccess files, and so stop httpd searching each directory of the path (for a .htaccess file). * It should be simple (and obvious) for httpd to call a CGI script to generate an index. For example, I might want the index in a busy directory to be cached. (Rather than having a cron job repeatedly making an index.html file.) * All the index options should be settable in the per-directory config files. Currently you cannot set FancyIndexing on a per-directory basis. I realise that rewriting this part of httpd would probably be counter- productive right now. But I mention this now so that you all know where I would like apache to be heading. David.