Re: X Mosaic, FTP and PASV

Dave_Raggett (dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com)
Fri, 3 Dec 93 18:12:52 GMT

> If we had a place for storing information related to a document,
> (do we? There's talk about a "Hyperdoc" type in HTAnchor.c, but
> it's never flushed out.), then the size (as a number) should be
> put there. Then all those browsers that currently give transfer
> status in bytes could give it as a percentage.

In the HTML+ spec I introduced a SIZE attribute for anchors with
this in mind. People persuaded me to take it out, but maybe we
should put it back again :-)

> A browser could implement a selection for http-served documents
> which invokes a HEAD to find out this kind of information. If
> this info included the time changed, it could be compared against
> the global history.

Yup. I see two scenarios:

(A) Browser builds directory listing for FTP host/path.
The size is stuck into each <A> element for use when
the user clicks on a file

(B) HTTP server builds directory listing on behalf of client
The size is stuck into each <A> element for use when
the user clicks on a file

In each case the information is fresh and so valuable for displaying
a progress gauge.

Thanks for bringing this up - I will write it up in the next version
of the HTML+ spec.

Cheers,

Dave Raggett