Re: problem with content negotiation ?

[David Robinson <dr...@ast.cam.ac.uk>]

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.