Very Computer

Hello,

What web servers out there support advanced document control?
By "advanced document control" I mean the following:

1. Users can go to a web page that shows icons representing
   files stored on the web server.  These files can be anything.
   The user can click on the icon to check out a file.  The
   file is downloaded to the host running the browser and the
   cooresponding application is spawned so they can edit, view
   etc... the file.  (This part is easy...)

2. After editing the file they can "save" it to the web server
   (this is the tricky part).  The web server is smart enough to
   unlock the file (allow others to "check it out") once it is
   returned and optionally store the old version.

Is there a module for apache or features of NES 2.0 to allow this
or would something like this involve some sort of custom ftp'ing
scripts to grab the file from the host that checked it out after
the file was saved to the local disk by the application?

Thanks for any input...

        - Dan

There is an IETF working group looking at issues of doing distributed
authoring and versioning of Web content, which is perhaps a bit more
specific than what you are asking about:

    http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/

--

Agranat Systems, Inc.                               http://www.agranat.com/

I'm looking for something similar.  The content on our site will be
owned by various people, many of whom will be non-technical types.
What's the  best way to let them maintain the content?  Navigator Gold,
and  FrontPage seem to offer some offer some features.  Are there other,
better tools?

--
Dan McDaniel

Quote:

> Hello,

> What web servers out there support advanced document control?

(Note that anonymous visitors have readonly access, but to use the
features described here you must login - you can create yourself a
userid within the system.   Note too that the features described
here only apply to documents "imported by copy" - which is
just one mode of use.   See the documents at the site).

Quote:> By "advanced document control" I mean the following:

> 1. Users can go to a web page that shows icons representing
>    files stored on the web server.  These files can be anything.
>    The user can click on the icon to check out a file.  The
>    file is downloaded to the host running the browser and the
>    cooresponding application is spawned so they can edit, view
>    etc... the file.  (This part is easy...)

Quote:> 2. After editing the file they can "save" it to the web server
>    (this is the tricky part).

Quote:>     The web server is smart enough to
>    unlock the file (allow others to "check it out") once it is
>    returned and optionally store the old version.

It also has at least one essential feature you overlooked: when you
"book out" a document, you must specify an expiry date.   If you have
not entered the update (or cancelled the booking out) by then, your
lock expires, so that others can work on the document.

--
Nick Kew

Quote:>I'm looking for something similar.  The content on our site will be
>owned by various people, many of whom will be non-technical types.
>What's the  best way to let them maintain the content?  Navigator Gold,
>and  FrontPage seem to offer some offer some features.  Are there other,
>better tools?

Quote:>Netscape Enterprise server incorporates "check-outs" and version control via
>MKS software. The version 3 Enterprise will have a very slick Java applet
>for checkout, etc.

--

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--kyler