Re: two-way communication in html

W. Scott Meeks (meeks@osf.org)
Fri, 3 Mar 1995 12:30:36 +0500

>From www-talk@www10.w3.org Fri Mar 3 11:42:22 1995
>From: mau@beatles.cselt.stet.it (Maurizio Codogno)
>Subject: two-way communication in html
[...]
>I (pronunciation: "my boss") would like to investigate how the thing could
>be changed, in order to have a real "live" environment. Supposing for the
>moment to stick with unix systems and reasonable root powers :-), the first
>ideas which came to me were the following:
>
[...]
>(3) start a http client&server in the local machine and devise some way
> to communicate between the browser and the http daemon.
>
[...]
>a logical level, and it should be avoided. Solution (3) in a certain sense
>just moves the problem, since we have yet to think about how to make
>an interaction between the browser and the http daemon, but at least this
>has become a "local" solution.

In a nutshell, here's what we've done to solve this. By taking advantage of
the http_proxy protocol, we can insert little mini-servers in between the
browser and the real servers. For the most part, these little mini-servers
(okay, call them agents if you really want) just pass the request/response
stream between the browser and servers. However, they can also filter,
modify, and take external actions based on what they see in the stream. In
addition we have a browser prototyping testbed into which we've
incorporated a communications channel that the agents can use to inform or
control the browser.

Take a look at http://riwww.osf.org:8001/www/waiba/index.html for more
info. Also look at http://riwww.osf.org:8001/www/index.html for
information on other WWW projects at the OSF Research Institute.

W. Scott Meeks
OSF Research Institute
meeks@osf.org
(617) 621-7229