CGI specification

["Roy T. Fielding" <fi...@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU>]

> Can we first talk to whoever is responsible for the CGI spec
> (is anyone ?) - we might need to rename the variables and they
> might have some new ones that we could add too.

W3C will be responsible for the CGI spec when they are fully staffed
(June) or if they can find a trusted volunteer to maintain it before then.
By trusted, I mean both the individual and that person's employer
(with the latter preferably being a member of W3C).  If somebody here
wants to do it, send a note to timbl@w3.org (be sure to include a
descriptive subject).

> If nobody is responsible for CGI, we can just make the new
> variables and post something to say "this is CGI/1.2" - who's going
> to argue ?  :-)

Nobody, but the changes will be ignored if they are not first agreed
to by the major server authors.  That means Henrik (for W3O), Tony Sanders
(for Plexus, if he still cares), Rob McCool and/or Ari Luotonen (Netsite),
somebody at NCSA (Beth, Carlos, or Brandon?), Chuck Shotton (MacHTTP),
Bob Denny (WinHTTPd), and us.  It is this group of individuals that really
controls the content of CGI.

.......Roy

Re: CGI specification

[Rob McCool <ro...@netscape.com>]

/*
 * "Re: CGI specification" by Rob Hartill <ha...@ooo.lanl.gov>
 *    written Thu, 16 Mar 95 10:38:42 MST
 * 
 * We have Rob McCool and some of the NCSA crew listening.  Any
 * objections to the new CGI variables ? If we add them, will you ?

Possibly, it depends on which variables are chosen. 

 * According to the patch list they are,
 *
 * DOCUMENT_ROOT and SCRIPT_TRANSLATED_NAME

I'd like to see DOCUMENT_ROOT be made optional for servers that don't
necessarily support such a concept, and SCRIPT_TRANSLATED_NAME
replaced with TRANSLATION_PREFIX. In Netsite, we have an internal
variable which records which prefix was used to translate the user's
URI. For /cgi-bin/test-cgi, translated to /var/httpd/cgi-bin/test-cgi,
TRANSLATION_PREFIX=/var/httpd/cgi-bin

On a broader scale, I think the CGI specification should be extended
to allow server authors to provide whatever new variables they need,
provided they warn people about the dangers of non-portability and the
possibility that their variables may be replaced at any time by
"official" ones in the specification.

 * Do you have any other ideas for CGI enhancements that we can push
 * jointly ?
 */

Our main API enhancements have been beyond CGI... the only things
we've done with CGI have been adding variables for HTTPS certificate
information.

As far as who "owns" CGI, I'd like to see it in the hands of
W3C. Supporting the spec is kind of a big job, though, I get ~10-20
e-mails a day to robm@ncsa.uiuc.edu saying "my CGI program doesn't
work, help me".

--Rob