Dan Jacobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I wish wwwoffle would have an "approval needed" directory, where when
> an incoming Content-Length is over a user set limit, the URL is sent
> to a special /var/cache/wwwoffle/confirm directory where we can learn
> why each item was held up, and click to approve. Maybe even it could
> optionally also get the first bit of a file so we know what we're in
> for.
>
> I mean let's say you see http://nurd.org/tinyfile.txt and click it for
> downloading next Monday. What are the chances that you'll catch that
> it is indeed a 15 billion byte file, before spending more modem time
> than you planned?
Adding an option to WWWOFFLE to limit the maximum size of a file to
fetch is not difficult. It would only work if the server sent a
Content-Length header or you were happy to download the first x MB of
the file in other cases.
The difficult part is the rest of what you want. The ability to
confirm that you want the larger file and the ability to fetch larger
files when they have been approved (without them being hit by the same
limit). The code becomes difficult to manage with checking lots of
things about every request and reply and methods of bypassing these
checks in particular cases.
This is very like the idea of a mechanism that allows fetching of
files that are in the DontGet list if they are specially asked for.
This means a special URL to bypass the DontGet list (and what about
for images in this page etc).
Then also it means another option to disable the getting of URLs using
the special method. This is so that people who use the DontGet
section to enforce a blacklist can stop people bypassing it.
Then what happens if the really big file is being fetched using the
special method to bypass the DontGet section. You need a method to
allow bypassing both sections.
I know that there are solutions to these obstacles, but I am trying to
illustrate that some changes that may seem simple are really not so
simple. I cannot make every change that people ask me for, to do so
would be to risk the development of the program by adding conflicting
or incompatible changes.
--
Andrew.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew M. Bishop [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/
WWWOFFLE users page:
http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/version-2.8/user.html
