WWWOFFLE - World Wide Web Offline Explorer - Version 2.6 - Win32
      ================================================================


This is the Windows 32-bit version of the World Wide Web OFFline Explorer,
otherwise know as WWWOFFLE.  A UNIX version of this program has been available
since the start of 1997.  The possibility of a Windows version of the program
was brought to my attention by an investigation of the Cygwin development kit.


The Cygwin Development Kit
--------------------------

The Cygwin development kit is described in its FAQ as follows:

        The Cygwin tools are Win32 ports of the popular GNU development
        tools for Windows NT, 95, and 98. They function through the use
        of the Cygwin library which provides a UNIX-like API on top of
        the Win32 API.

        Use the tools to: 
        o Develop Win32 console or GUI applications, using the Win32 API.
        o Easily port many significant UNIX programs to Windows NT/9x
          without making significant source code changes. Configure and
          build most GNU software from source using standard Unix build
          procedures. 
        o Work in a fairly complete UNIX-like environment, with access to
          many common UNIX utilities (from both the provided bash shell
          and the standard Win32 command shell). 

More information about the Cygnus development kit and the GNU tools that are in
the development kit can be obtained from their web-sites.

http://cygwin.com/
http://www.gnu.org/

To compile WWWOFFLE you should use the latest version of the cygwin library.


Using WWWOFFLE
--------------

Because this version of WWWOFFLE is a port of a UNIX program (with negligible
changes from the UNIX version) some of the concepts and features may not be
familiar to users of MS Windows.

Filenames
- - - - -

On UNIX systems the '/' character is used as a path separator, DOS uses '\', you
should use the UNIX format in the wwwoffle.conf configuration file and in the
command line arguments.  One other change that has been made is that on DOS the
':' character is not allowed in filenames so the '!' character has been used in
the host sub-directory names instead.

On UNIX systems the filenames are case-sensitive and can be longer than 8.3
characters.  WWWOFFLE requires that the files that it creates keep their case
and are longer than 8.3 characters.

On UNIX systems there is no distinction between the separate disk drives like
there is under DOS.  With a DOS system there are drives 'A:', 'C:', 'D:' etc, on
UNIX all of the disks are accessed from the root directory '/'.  In the Cygnus
CDK and hence in WWWOFFLE all pathnames are expected to be in this format, the
drive that the operating system booted from (normally drive C:) is '/', drive
'A:' would be '//a/', drive 'D:' would be '//d/'.  You must use this format in
the wwwoffle.conf configuration file and in the command line arguments.

The default installation location for WWWOFFLE on UNIX is different from that
for Windows-32.

                        UNIX                                    Windows-32

Cached files:   /var/spool/wwwoffle                     /wwwoffle
Config file:    /var/spool/wwwoffle/wwwoffle.conf       /wwwoffle/wwwoffle.conf
Executables:    /usr/local/bin & /usr/local/sbin        /wwwoffle/bin
Documentation:  /usr/local/man/man*                     /wwwoffle/doc

In the documentation and the program you may find references to these pathnames
and filenames, you should make the appropriate conversions.

Other Terms
- - - - - -

Syslog        - The system logfile, many daemon processes (servers) write their
                status to this file.
Daemon        - A program (usually some type of server) that runs in the
                background and sleeps until it is called upon to do anything.
Username/uid  - Users on a UNIX system have to log on and are assigned a
                username and a numberic user ID (uid).
                [Not the same as a Windows 95/98 logon username]
Groupname/gid - Users on UNIX are also assigned to a group that has a name and a
                numeric Group ID (gid).
                [Not applicable to Windows 95/98]


Running WWWOFFLE
----------------

The WWWOFFLE server program 'wwwoffled' is typically it is started from the boot
time scripts (the equivalent to autoexec.bat on DOS). On a Win32 system I do not
know the best way of starting a program at boot time so I leave it to you to
decide.

The WWWOFFLE helper program 'wwwoffle' is run each time that the dial-up
connection is started or stopped.  This is normally done by the scripts that are
automatically run by the PPP connection process.  Again I do not know the best
way of doing this on Win32, the graphical interface to DUN does not appear to
allow for this.

Quick Demonstration
- - - - - - - - - -

To see what WWWOFFLE does, use the following steps for a quick demonstration.

1) Edit the configuration file
   c:\wwwoffle\wwwoffle.conf

2) Start the WWWOFFLE demon running.
   c:\wwwoffle\bin\wwwoffled

3) Start your WWW Browser and set up localhost:8080 as the proxy.
   Disable caching between sessions within the browser.

4) a) Connect to the internet
   b) Tell the WWWOFFLE demon that you are online
        c:\wwwoffle\bin\wwwoffle -online
   c) Start browsing
   d) Tell the WWWOFFLE demon that you are offline
        c:\wwwoffle\bin\wwwoffle -offline
   e) Disconnect from the internet

5) Go back and browse the pages again while not connected, follow some different
   links this time (you will see a WWWOFFLE server message in the browser).

6) a) Connect to the internet
   b) Tell the WWWOFFLE demon that you are online
        c:\wwwoffle\bin\wwwoffle -online
   c) Tell the WWWOFFLE demon to fetch the new pages
        c:\wwwoffle\bin\wwwoffle -fetch
   d) Tell the WWWOFFLE demon that you are offline
        c:\wwwoffle\bin\wwwoffle -offline
   e) Disconnect from the internet

7) a) Go to http://localhost:8080/index/ and find the newly downloaded pages.
   b) Browse the new pages that have just been fetched.


Other Information
-----------------

You should read the rest of the documentation about WWWOFFLE, in particular the
FAQ and README.1st file.  These should answer your questions or at least point
you in the direction of how to contact me for information.

There may be other UNIX biased features of WWWOFFLE in the documentation of the
program itself.  Since this is the first version of WWWOFFLE that works on Win32
platforms I hope that you will try and work around any problems.  I will try and
make sure that the next version has more applicable information.



Andrew M. Bishop
January 26th 2001