Re: mod_speling

[Martin Kraemer <ma...@mch.sni.de>]

On Thu, Mar 02, 2000 at 04:22:36PM -0500, Bruce R Miller wrote:
> Hello Martin;
>   Are you the appropriate person to write about mod_speling, or would
> this
> better be directed to the apache team in general?
> [wenn, dann entshuldigung, bitte!]

Both is okay.

> A collegue here is concerned about the spelling correction being
> _too_ friendly.  It makes it hard for people, especially at other
> sites,  to realized they've misspelled a link.  Automatic casefolding
> is more than welcome, though.
> 
> Our thought was to add an option, (CheckSpelling CaseOnly, instead
> of CheckSpelling on, or ...) that would have it automatically  
> redirect _only_ if it were a case correction, but have other 
> corrections (even if only 1 candidate) fall thru to the 
> 300 Multiple choices.  Then people still get to the right page, 
> but have been warned that the link was wrong.
> 
> The modification should be pretty trivial, providing it fits with the 
> philosophy of the module.   Does it seem worth it?

Yes, the proposal to even restrict the functionality to case correction ONLY
has been suggested a while ago. I would welcome this, too, because
mod_speling can be misused to "poke around" and look what other file are
there (try "index.XXXX and it will happily list index.php3, index.gif,
index.shtml.de -- you name it).

OTOH, is "multiple choices" really appropriate when suggesting a single
spelling fix? Maybe the return code should better be "303 See other"?

And finally, "someone" has to do it, and currently I don't have the time.
But if you want to try, I am more than willing to review it and commit it if
appropriate. -- After the ApacheCon2000 and my 2 weeks vacation, that is...

Hope to hear from you again, Thanks for using Apache,

    Martin
-- 
<Ma...@MchP.Siemens.De>             |     Fujitsu Siemens
Fon: +49-89-636-46021, FAX: +49-89-636-41143 | 81730  Munich,  Germany

Re: mod_speling

[Hugo Haas <hu...@w3.org>]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2000, Martin Kraemer wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 02, 2000 at 04:22:36PM -0500, Bruce R Miller wrote:
[..]

> > Our thought was to add an option, (CheckSpelling CaseOnly, instead
> > of CheckSpelling on, or ...) that would have it automatically  
> > redirect _only_ if it were a case correction, but have other 
> > corrections (even if only 1 candidate) fall thru to the 
> > 300 Multiple choices.  Then people still get to the right page, 
> > but have been warned that the link was wrong.
> > 
> > The modification should be pretty trivial, providing it fits with the 
> > philosophy of the module.   Does it seem worth it?
> 
> Yes, the proposal to even restrict the functionality to case correction ONLY
> has been suggested a while ago. I would welcome this, too, because
> mod_speling can be misused to "poke around" and look what other file are
> there (try "index.XXXX and it will happily list index.php3, index.gif,
> index.shtml.de -- you name it).

I coded that some time ago. I will send you the patch as soon as I find
it. :-)

The other feature that I would like to add is a "don't take those files
into consideration" list for files like *~, *.old, *.bak, etc. I haven't
found the time to do that yet.

> OTOH, is "multiple choices" really appropriate when suggesting a single
> spelling fix? Maybe the return code should better be "303 See other"?

Actually, a related problem is that mod_speling is unable to talk to
mod_negotiation.

Example:

I have a resource: http://foo.bar/test.html

Somebody requests: http://foo.bar/Test

mod_speling should realize that it looks like /test and instead of
returning a 300 with only one choice (http://foo.bar/test.html), it
should do a redirect to http://foo.bar/test and at that point
mod_negotiation will kick in, or mod_speling will be called again and
then a 300 can be returned.

Regards,

Hugo

-- 
Hugo Haas, Webmaster, Systems Team
World Wide Web Consortium                               mailto:hugo@w3.org
Massachusetts Institute of Technology                  tel:+1-617-452-2092