This is the readme file for DustMote, an
unusually small Tcl program. DustMote will run on any platform having
Tcl and web sockets. It has been tested heavily on Windows95, moderately
on Linux, and lightly on Macintosh.


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.
For even more documentation than comes with the Tcl download, one may
purchase Brent B. Welch's excellent book, "Practical Programming in Tcl
and Tk," second edition, Prentice Hall PTR. It is well worth the money.
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 an 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 wish instead of tclsh, delete or comment out 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
setting of the peerCount variable, the peer1 procedure, the peer2
procedure, the call to peer1, and the call to peer2. To delete the mime
feature: delete the setting of the mimeType variables, the mime
procedure, and the call to mime.

When you have finished editing, just "save" (or "save as") the program
and use tclsh or wish 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 September 22, 1998.


Yours truly,

Harold Kaplan.
