You can now interface your Lisp Programs to the world show exactly
what you can do better and faster in Lisp.
The server is full-featured (http 1.0 and html 2.0) and comes complete
with source code. It has been proven in major production systems
(running on the lisp machine) and applied in a number of Artificial
Intelligence systems.
Key features include:
* Computed URLs
* HTML 2.0 generation.
* Implements GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, DELETE HTTP methods.
* Extensible, object-oriented architecture.
* Advanced condition architecture.
* Self-documentation.
* Working examples to get you started.
* Toolkit of web abstractions.
* Rapid prototyping for research, products, or protocol development.
* Disconnected operation on PowerBooks.
* Complete source code.
* Free.
The server was described in a paper at the 1st WWW conference
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/cl-http/server-abstract.html
MAC and Lisp Machine versions are now available for FTP from:
ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/users/jcma/cl-http/
Mac version 1.1 is included in the MCL 3.0 CD from Digitool
(http://www.digitool.com/),
which was cut yesterday and should be in user hands within about two weeks.
The server also
runs in MCL 2.0.1, but only in single threaded mode.
A listserve to discuss Common Lisp based www servers, clients, and
related design issues is available at www-cl@ai.mit.edu. You can join by sending
an email message to www-cl-request@ai.mit.edu including in the message body
subscribe www-cl <your email address>
Future releases will be announced to www-cl.
Please report any interesting applications or server extensions to
www-cl@ai.mit.edu
Volunteers are sought for ports to LispWorks, Franz, Lucid, CMU Lisp
or any other full-featured lisps running on PCs, UNIX machines, or other
architectures. Given the Mac port, this reduces to deploying threads
and interfacing to TCP.
There will be a tutorial on this server and programming the Web at the 1995
Lisp Users and Vendors Conference in Cambridge in August, 1995. (Contact
luv-organizer@ai.sri.com for further information).
Information is sought on other uses of dynamic languages (e.g., Lisp,
Scheme, Dylan)
in world wide web applications.
The Mac port was a product of a collaboration between Apple's Cambridge
Research Laboratory,
The AI Department of the University of Wuerzburg, Digitool Inc, and the MIT
Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory. Support for the MIT AI lab's research is provided in part by
the Advanced Research
Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense under contract number
MDA972-93-1-003N7.