Hello All - 

Agora servers are 'bot' Perl scripts that accept requests for
files to be downloaded and sent to any email address as
attachments. At one time there were dozens of these 'bots'
around the world. Sadly there are only a very few that remain.
:-\ 

Here is a 'project' combining Perl with a linemode 'browser
engine' that could be very useful to those less fortunate who
do not have easy access to the WWW or at too high a cost for
the connection. 

Quoting Hugh Sasse from his webpage:
http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/projects/text_browser.html 

"There are large areas of the world that do not have access to
the WWW, a case in point being most of Africa. Many of these
areas do have access to electronic mail, as a variety of
systems exist for e-mail, from UUCP, to fidonet. Indeed, there
are people in the western world who have access to e-mail only
services and there are commercial companies in the same
position of providing e-mail only access to the internet.." 

"Also, many people with disabilities have difficulty accessing
the WWW, although they may be able to access e-mail
satisfactorily. Many blind people dislike the graphical nature
of programs such as Netscape Navigator, and prefer text
browsers, but even Lynx can be difficult to access if you are
not used to the technology." 

> On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Charles Angelich wrote to Hugh Sasse: 

CA> Hello Hugh - 

CA> Would you still happen to have the Agora Perl source code? 

HS>> They are pretty unix specific, and depend on the w3c
HS>> linemode browser (libwww), which stuggled with html3. Are
HS>> you still interested. 

[ CPA NOTE: Recent versions of libwww will execute on *nix,
W9x-WinNT, and Mac OS the last entry in the changelog for
libwww is 2003-04-18 at:
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/libwww
/ChangeLog?rev=1.49&content-type=text/plain
]

CA>>> I know several people interested in setting up Agora
CA>>> servers but we cannot locate the code. :-\ 

HS>> I've still got the code, untouched for some time if you
HS>> still want it. 

CA> Yes. If you could point me to a working URL to download it
CA> or attach the code to an email I would be grateful. 

HS> List of the last few bug fixes (2000):
HS> http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/agora_bug_fixes.txt 

HS> The Perl source:
HS> http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/agora_0.8h.pl 

HS> If you are getting this with Agora, you will need the lines
HS> unfolded:
HS> http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/agora_0.8h.pl.uue is
HS> uuencoded, so will allow you to get around that. 

HS> If you need a base64 encoded one I can roll one for you if
HS> you wish. 

CA> As I understand this it requires the libwww as the 'engine'? 

HS> Yes, or something that will do the same job: lynx -dump may
HS> get most of the way there. 

HS> Info on the linemode browser is at:
HS> http://www.w3.org/LineMode/ 

HS> My project proposal to replace this with something else has
HS> a little more background in it:
HS> http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/projects/text_browser.html 

HS> HTH 

HS> Hugh 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__

 

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