


Hello

        Finally, the day has come for the release of an Archie pre-beta
version. You will find below the list of new features.


        This release does not include all of the components of the Archie
system. The main missing component is the Prospero server (dirsrv).
Nonetheless all of the Archie functionality is present in this
distribution. This will allow us to perform some more tests on the remaining
parts of the system.


          Those of you interested in being a beta-tester for this release
should contact me, appropriate accounts will be setup and extra documentation
will be given.  Beta testers with accessible spare machines would be greatly
appreciated in order to not disrupt the exist Archie and  facilitate the
test phase.  Of course, we will, in our daily support,  give priority to the
beta testers.
        

Thank you, 

                
                                                -Sandro Mazzucato
                                                 and the Archie team
                                                 



===========================================================================



                        Archie 3.5 Beta
                        ---------------




New in this release:
====================

Here are the major added components to the system with some
of the key points involved in each one of them.


- Support for a new database module (webindex)
        - retrieval of HTML pages through http protocol
        - Keyword extraction
        - Controlled crawling of the WWW
        - Site by site basis
        - Content extraction
        - configurable stoplist (keyword exclusion)

- New database structure
        - More reliable structure.
        - NOTE: Cannot used this version with the database of Archie 3.3

- New search engine
        - Based on a paged tree structured index
        - Faster searches
        - Less memory required
        - More disk space for construction of the index

- New search interface
        - cgi-bin compliant interface


- A better domain filter for anonftp
        - results can be pre-configured to return in a certain order
          (e.g. ftp sites close to the server first)
        - configurable on a server basis




Fixed bugs
==========


- the ``-t'' switch on arcontrol creates the new files  and work files
  in the specified temp directory and not in ~archie/db/tmp


- Lock files are now created in ~archie/db/locks


- host_manage can handle multiple preffered hostnames for a site



Currently working on:
=====================

- Rewrite of the cgi-bin front-end to be more flexible.

- Archie Help page 

- Regular Expressions with the new search engine.

- New set of manpages and documentation.

- Additional type of searches





Currently testing:
==================

- dirsrv with the new database technology.




Known Problems:
===============

- arexchange of webindex will not fully functional
  it will not transfer .excerpt files. We still need to experiment
  with indexing of the Web and see what is involved with
  exchanges of data.



