http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Paul Derbyshire]

Why does your Web server keep changing the time stamp on this file
monotonously every single minute? This is really annoying because when
browsing the FAQ, clicking links to anchors, and then clicking Back to
browse it, every time an exact minute has passed the browser will go fetch
the page from the server again, taking an eternity to do so, because it
sees the changed timestamp and thinks the damn FAQ's been updated when it
hasn't been.


Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files. It is a
major nuisance to viewers and presents an artificial (and some would go so
far as to say fraudulent) image of recently-updatedness to the file. Be
honest about how recently a Web page has truly been modified.

-- 
   .*.  "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
-()  <  circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
   `*'  straight line."    -------------------------------------------------
        -- B. Mandelbrot  | http://surf.to/pgd.net
_____________________ ____|________     Paul Derbyshire     pderbysh@usa.net
Programmer & Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|

Re: http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
> Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files. It is a
> major nuisance to viewers and presents an artificial (and some would go so
> far as to say fraudulent) image of recently-updatedness to the file.
                ^^^^^^^^^^

Paul, others have told you already -- among them Chris Lewis in nanam,
so this is not specific to egcs -- but your style is barely (if at all)
acceptable.

There is absolutely no need to treat volunteers (like myself) and others,
who already do work much more than they're getting paid for, that way.


With regard to Paul's request: Jason, I noticed that indeed the egcs web
server apparently does not provide "Last modified/Last changed" data.

As an additional data point, my Apache 1.3.4 machines do provide that
by default, but I failed to find any setting in httpd.conf on the egcs
machine that might disable that.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald Pfeifer (Jerry)      Vienna University of Technology
pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at   http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/~pfeifer/

Re: http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Gerald Pfeifer]

[ Here is an abstract for the mailing list and Paul as this has been
  resolved off-list. ]

On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
>> Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files. It is a
>> major nuisance to viewers and presents an artificial (and some would go so
>> far as to say fraudulent) image of recently-updatedness to the file.
>                 ^^^^^^^^^^
> [...] 
> With regard to Paul's request: Jason, I noticed that indeed the egcs web
> server apparently does not provide "Last modified/Last changed" data.

Once notified of this issue, Jason quickly analysed the situation and
found out the following:

  If you enable the Server Side Include (SSI) feature of the apache
  httpd, it doesn't send a Last-Modified header for SSI documents.
  On egcs.cygnus.com/sourceware.cygnus.com, the server is configured to
  assume that all HTML documents are potentially SSI documents, so it
  never output the Last-Modified header.

  The EGCS pages do use the SSI stuff for the Glimpse index stuff, so I
  need to leave it enabled for those.

By Tuesday he had obtained a patch for this by DJ Delorie and updated the
Apache server on the egcs machine.


Again, thanks a lot to Jason for his quick response and fix for a problem
that was _not_ his fault, let alone intentional or fraudulent.

Paul, I believe you really owe Jason an apology, either here on the list
or by private e-mail.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald "Jerry" pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/~pfeifer/

Re: http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Paul Derbyshire]

Me:

>>> Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files.

Someone:

>> With regard to Paul's request: Jason, I noticed that indeed the egcs web
>> server apparently does not provide "Last modified/Last changed" data.

You:

>  If you enable the Server Side Include (SSI) feature of the apache
>  httpd, it doesn't send a Last-Modified header for SSI documents.
>  On egcs.cygnus.com/sourceware.cygnus.com, the server is configured to
>  assume that all HTML documents are potentially SSI documents, so it
>  never output the Last-Modified header...

Apologies...I didn't think a bug in a web server could possibly cause such
behavior. Web pages are ALWAYS supposed to provide a (truthful) timestamp
for client and proxy caching systems to use. This is probably in the HTTP
RFCs somewhere. Anyways, it looks like we've all been bitten by a weird
Apache bug (and possibly the first bug I've ever heard of Apache having)...
Someone (i.e. the webmaster) might want to send a bug report to Apache
about the missing timestamp header problem. SSI files should have a
timestamp reflecting the logical 'last changed' time, that is, the most
recent modification time among the HTML file and all included files.

-- 
   .*.  "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
-()  <  circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
   `*'  straight line."    -------------------------------------------------
        -- B. Mandelbrot  | http://surf.to/pgd.net
_____________________ ____|________     Paul Derbyshire     pderbysh@usa.net
Programmer & Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|

http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Paul Derbyshire]

Why does your Web server keep changing the time stamp on this file
monotonously every single minute? This is really annoying because when
browsing the FAQ, clicking links to anchors, and then clicking Back to
browse it, every time an exact minute has passed the browser will go fetch
the page from the server again, taking an eternity to do so, because it
sees the changed timestamp and thinks the damn FAQ's been updated when it
hasn't been.


Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files. It is a
major nuisance to viewers and presents an artificial (and some would go so
far as to say fraudulent) image of recently-updatedness to the file. Be
honest about how recently a Web page has truly been modified.

-- 
   .*.  "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
-()  <  circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
   `*'  straight line."    -------------------------------------------------
        -- B. Mandelbrot  | http://surf.to/pgd.net
_____________________ ____|________     Paul Derbyshire     pderbysh@usa.net
Programmer & Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|

Re: http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
> Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files. It is a
> major nuisance to viewers and presents an artificial (and some would go so
> far as to say fraudulent) image of recently-updatedness to the file.
                ^^^^^^^^^^

Paul, others have told you already -- among them Chris Lewis in nanam,
so this is not specific to egcs -- but your style is barely (if at all)
acceptable.

There is absolutely no need to treat volunteers (like myself) and others,
who already do work much more than they're getting paid for, that way.


With regard to Paul's request: Jason, I noticed that indeed the egcs web
server apparently does not provide "Last modified/Last changed" data.

As an additional data point, my Apache 1.3.4 machines do provide that
by default, but I failed to find any setting in httpd.conf on the egcs
machine that might disable that.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald Pfeifer (Jerry)      Vienna University of Technology
pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at   http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/~pfeifer/

Re: http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Paul Derbyshire]

Me:

>>> Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files.

Someone:

>> With regard to Paul's request: Jason, I noticed that indeed the egcs web
>> server apparently does not provide "Last modified/Last changed" data.

You:

>  If you enable the Server Side Include (SSI) feature of the apache
>  httpd, it doesn't send a Last-Modified header for SSI documents.
>  On egcs.cygnus.com/sourceware.cygnus.com, the server is configured to
>  assume that all HTML documents are potentially SSI documents, so it
>  never output the Last-Modified header...

Apologies...I didn't think a bug in a web server could possibly cause such
behavior. Web pages are ALWAYS supposed to provide a (truthful) timestamp
for client and proxy caching systems to use. This is probably in the HTTP
RFCs somewhere. Anyways, it looks like we've all been bitten by a weird
Apache bug (and possibly the first bug I've ever heard of Apache having)...
Someone (i.e. the webmaster) might want to send a bug report to Apache
about the missing timestamp header problem. SSI files should have a
timestamp reflecting the logical 'last changed' time, that is, the most
recent modification time among the HTML file and all included files.

-- 
   .*.  "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
-()  <  circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
   `*'  straight line."    -------------------------------------------------
        -- B. Mandelbrot  | http://surf.to/pgd.net
_____________________ ____|________     Paul Derbyshire     pderbysh@usa.net
Programmer & Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|

Re: http://egcs.cygnus.com/faq.html

[Gerald Pfeifer]

[ Here is an abstract for the mailing list and Paul as this has been
  resolved off-list. ]

On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
>> Please don't artificially alter the time stamps on HTML files. It is a
>> major nuisance to viewers and presents an artificial (and some would go so
>> far as to say fraudulent) image of recently-updatedness to the file.
>                 ^^^^^^^^^^
> [...] 
> With regard to Paul's request: Jason, I noticed that indeed the egcs web
> server apparently does not provide "Last modified/Last changed" data.

Once notified of this issue, Jason quickly analysed the situation and
found out the following:

  If you enable the Server Side Include (SSI) feature of the apache
  httpd, it doesn't send a Last-Modified header for SSI documents.
  On egcs.cygnus.com/sourceware.cygnus.com, the server is configured to
  assume that all HTML documents are potentially SSI documents, so it
  never output the Last-Modified header.

  The EGCS pages do use the SSI stuff for the Glimpse index stuff, so I
  need to leave it enabled for those.

By Tuesday he had obtained a patch for this by DJ Delorie and updated the
Apache server on the egcs machine.


Again, thanks a lot to Jason for his quick response and fix for a problem
that was _not_ his fault, let alone intentional or fraudulent.

Paul, I believe you really owe Jason an apology, either here on the list
or by private e-mail.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald "Jerry" pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/~pfeifer/