WWWOFFLE - World Wide Web Offline Explorer - Version 2.6
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WHAT?
-----

The format of the cache that WWWOFFLE uses to store the web pages has changed
very slightly in version 2.6 compared to the previous versions.  This is the
result of a total clean-up of the URL parsing and decoding/encoding functions.



WHY?
----

The wwwoffled program uses the URL to calculate the filename that should be used
to store the file in the cache.  It is possible for different string
representations of the same URL to exist.  This will mean that two different
filenames can be calculated for the same web-page.

For example the following two URLs refer to the same object:

http://www.localhost/~user
http://www.localhost/%7Euser

The '~' character can be represented by '%7E' in a URL and it means exactly the
same thing.

The wwwoffled program tried in previous versions to map all equivalent URLs to
the same result.  There were some cases where this was not applied and it was
possible for the same object to be stored in the cache under two different
names.  The new version of the program takes a lot more care to ensure that all
possible versions of the same URL map to the same file.

If you do not run the conversion program as detailed below WWWOFFLE will still
work.  The only problem is that some cached files will become inaccessible.  I
estimate that about 1% of files or fewer will change.



HOW?
----

         *** READ ALL THIS SECTION BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE ***


When you compile WWWOFFLE there is another program called 'convert-cache' that
is also compiled.  You need to run this program to convert the cache from the
'older' format to the 'newer' one.


There are a number of options that you can take for this conversion route, the
following applies to all of them.

In each of the options the basics are that you must run convert-cache and it
takes an argument of the name of the cache directory that is used (usually
/var/spool/wwwoffle).  When the program runs it prints out informational and
warning messages, these may be useful.


Option 1 - Be reckless

Run 'convert-cache /var/spool/wwwoffle', watch the messages go flashing by and
hope that it works.

Option 2 - Be brave

With sh/bash run 'convert-cache /var/spool/wwwoffle > convert.log 2>&1'
or with csh/tcsh run 'convert-cache /var/spool/wwwoffle >& convert.log'
read the messages and check the warnings.

Option 3 - Be safe

Backup the cache first then follow option 2.
With GNU tar I suggest that you use the --atime-preserve option so that the
access times of the files in the cache are not modified by performing the
backup.  The index and purge options in WWWOFFLE use these so it is important.


If the convert-cache program crashes then that is a bug - tell me.