ArchiePlex -- An Archie Gateway for the World Wide Web
======================================================

Features
--------

ArchiePlex prides itself with the folowing features:

- Form-based interface to all Archie functionality
- Browsing interface for browsers that don't support forms
- Simple interface for basic functionality
- Single output format for all interfaces
- WWW-linked results for quick retrieval and navigation
- In-line internal images for NCSA Mosaic (only)
- Runs under CGI servers and Plexus


Installation
------------ 

First make sure you have a recent version of the Archie command-line
client. ArchiePlex can be configured for client version 1.4.1 and
5.1b. The latest client can be had from
file://prospero.isi.edu/pub/prospero/prospero.tar.Z

Expand the ArchiePlex distribution in a place where your server can
get to it. Configure the variables at the top of the file
archieplexengine.pl for your system:

$maintainer = the name of the person maintaining the installation
$archie = the location of the archie comand line client
$newarchie = 1 if you use client version 5 or greater, 0 for version 1.4.1
$archie_timeout = the number of seconds after which to timeout an archie search
$defaultserver = the archie server to use by default

Then configure the location of the archieplex source files in the
$packages variable in archieplex.pl, archieplexsimple.pl, and
archieplexform.pl.

Now install the required gateways according to the convention used by
your server:

For NCSA simply link, move or copy the archieplex.pl,
archieplexsimple.pl and archieplexform.pl into a server script
directory (eg /cgi-bin), optionally dropping the ".pl" extension for
cosmetics.

For Plexus add the following lines to your local.conf file:

  # Misc/Contributed (probably require customization)
  load    archieplex.pl
  load    archieplexform.pl
  load    archieplexsimple.pl

  # Contributed -- check the file or local customization
  map     archieplex       archieplex.pl         &do_archieplex($top, $rest, $query)
  map     archieplexsimple archieplexsimple.pl   &do_archieplexsimple($query)
  map     archieplexform   archieplexform.pl     &do_archieplexform($query)
 

Finally, adjust the archieplexform.pl file to send the form to the
URL configured on your system (e.g. /cgi-bin/archieplexform),
link it into other documents on your server, and you're all set.

I would appreciate it if you could mail me and let me know you're
running ArchiePlex, I can then update the list of servers on
http://web.nexor.co.uk/archie.html


Hacking
-------

If you know Perl you should have no trouble figuring out how
ArchiePlex does it's stuff. Things you may want to tweak in
archieplexengine.pl are the displayed host order, the censoring
checks, and the protosites for those cool sites that have
Archie'd archive sites that are also available via HTTP.


Cheers,

Martijn Koster, m.koster@nexor.co.uk
ArchiePlex is explicitly placed into the public domain.
