1 PURPOSE OF THE PROGRAM

DustMote is a web server. I wrote it in the Tcl language because Tcl is
free, easy, stable, available on many platforms, and well documented. It
is true that Tcl is not remarkably speedy, but it is fast enough for my
site, and, though not multi-threaded, it can handle many clients at the
same time, asynchronously, by the use of non-blocking channels.

Of course, there are now many freeware server programs to be downloaded
from the web, and most of them are sturdy professional jobs that go like
lightning and swarm with useful features. The businessperson ought to
use one of those. I am an amateur, so I had to write the program myself.
There are nearly no features. DustMote merely serves files, both text
and image. I offer it to my fellow amateurs, so they can ignore other
people's features and think up new features that have never been thought
up before.


2 INSTALLATION

Open dustmote.tcl in a program editor. Change the definition of "root"
to suit your computer. Be sure to use forward slashes, not backward. Tcl
will make the correct changes for your platform at run time.

If you plan to use tclsh instead of wish, uncomment the vwait statement
at the bottom of the file. Macintosh users ought to use wish, so that
they can easily stop the program by typing in an exit command; they
ought not to use the vwait statement.

This version contains two features which some users may wish to delete,
so as to get more speed. To delete the "peer" feature: delete the peer
procedure, the call to peer, and the setting of the peerCount variable.
To delete the "mime" feature: delete the mime procedure, the call to
mime, and the setting of the mimeType variables. Also: the line reading

puts stdout " $line"

in the readIt procedure may be deleted or commented out.


When you have finished editing, just "save" the program and use wish or
tclsh to source it. If your platform has command lines, you may also
start up tclsh mentioning dustmote.tcl on the command line.


3 STATUS OF THE PROGRAM

This program is in the public domain.


4 DISTRIBUTION STATUS

DustMote is freely distributable.


5 CONTACTING THE AUTHOR

Please E-mail complaints to hmk@nadn.navy.mil and do not try to spare my
feelings. The date of this revision is October 18, 1998.


Yours truly,

Harold Kaplan.
