GlimpseHTTP HTML indexer
Description
GlimpseHTTP
includes automatic HTML indexer. Its primary
goal is to generate some hypertext structure which
supports combination of information browsing and searching.
Searching is based on ArchiveGlimpse (aglimpse) search program, which
is in turn a gateway between HTTP server and Glimpse
search tool.
Glimpse uses compact indices and allows
approximate searching, Boolean searching, and more.
In essence, GlimpseHTTP indexer traverses
the directory tree and builds an HTML index in each directory
(ghindex.html by default). For example, if you have a running
FTP site and want to make the files accessible via HTTP,
you can use the indexer to generate HTML index for each directory.
After that, HTTP users will be able to traverse your file
tree by following hypertext links. In contrast with on-the-fly
indices generated by HTTP server (for example, httpd 1.2),
GlimpseHTTP indices will include files and directory
descriptions if you provide it. If the description file
.description is missing from the current directory,
or if .description doesn't have description of some
file/directory, default description is generated.
Default description includes file/directory name and
number of files in the directory (for directories), or file
size (for regular files).
Generated indices can as well be used as a basis for hypertext structure
of your server - edit them if you need fine tuning.
Of course, you should have HTTP server running
on your host in order to made information available via HTTP.
Index in a given directory is obtained by combining
the index template file (see below) with the description of the directory.
Template File
A sample template file is included in a distribution
as wwwlib/template.bd
usually it should require no modifications.
(Setting your e-mail address so that users
could mail you with questions is now done automatically
at installation time by configure script).
Description File
Description file (.description by default) in every directory
has certain information that depends on the directory.
It has two types of lines:
- lines beginning with @ are normally copied in the beginning
of generated index; they contain information pertinent to
this directory.
- Lines beginning with filename separated from the rest of
the line by <TAB> are the description of each file
(directory). The description after the <TAB> will be used
as a text in the hyperlink and, if it is a sub-directory, as a title
for the index of that sub-directory.
Invocation
Index is just one of the
Archive Manager options. You invoke it
by typing I <archive-number>
See also
Paul Klark
paul@cs.arizona.edu