OVERVIEW OF NEW FEATURES IN APACHE 1.3

New features with this release, as extensions of the Apache functionality
For more information, see the documentation included with this release
(htdocs/manual/) or http://www.apache.org/docs/

In addition to a number of bug fixes and internal performance
enhancements, Apache 1.3 has the following specific new user
features:

  *) Support for Windows NT/95
       Apache now supports the Windows NT and Windows 95 operating
       systems, as well as the Unix systems supported in previos
       releases. Although the Windows version of Apache may not be
       perform as well as on the Unix systems for which Apache was
       originally written, the ability to run on Windows gives Apache the
       ability to run on a large number of web servers it was not
       previously able to.

  *) Regular Expression support for Alias and Redirect
       New AliasMatch, ScriptAliasMatch, and RedirectMatch directives
       allow for the use of regular expression matching. Additionally,
       new <DirectoryMatch>, <LocationMatch>, and <FilesMatch> sections
       provide a new syntax for regular expression sectioning.

  *) New "Magic" MIME-typing module
       A new module, the optional mod_mime_magic, has been added. It uses
       "magic numbers" and other hints from a file's contents to figure
       out what the contents are. It then uses this information to set
       the file's media type, if it cannot be determined by the file's
       extension.

  *) Directory indexing modules split
       The mod_dir module has been split in two, with mod_dir handling
       directory index files, and mod_autoindex creating directory
       listings.

  *) Support for Directory Icon Sizing
       The mod_autoindex module provides listings of directory contents
       when appropriate. If the FancyIndexing option is enabled, each
       file in the list is preceded by an icon representing the content
       type. In earlier versions of Apache, the HTML IMG tags for these
       icons weren't sized, so the browser had to wait until the images
       were loaded before it could lay out the page. With 1.3, the
       IndexOptions directive has two new keywords which allow you to
       control whether pre-sized IMG tags are used. This can
       substantially speed up the display of large directory listings.

  *) AccessFileName Enhancement
       The <AccessFileName> directive can now take more than one
       filename. This lets sites serving pages from network file systems
       and more than one Apache web server, configure access based on the
       server through which shared pages are being served.

  *) HostNameLookups now defaults to "Off"
       The HostNameLookups directive now defaults to "Off". This means
       that, unless explictly turned on, the server will not resolve IP
       addresses into names. This was done to spare the Internet from
       unneccessary DNS traffic.

  *) New child_init function for module API
       A new phase for Apache's API is called once per "heavy-weight
       process," before any requests are handled. This allows the module
       to set up anything that need to be done once per processes. For
       example, connections to databases.

  *) New child_exit function for module API
       A new phase for Apache's API is called prior to termination of
       a server child, e.g. when max_requests_per_child is reached.
       This allow for modules to tear down anything that need to be done 
       once per processes. For example, connections to databases.

  *) Totally overhauled mod_rewrite:
       First the last officially available release of mod_rewrite (3.0.9) was
       integrated into the Apache source repository. Additionally to the fact
       that this fixed some bugs, mod_rewrite now is no longer developed and
       maintained _externally_ by the original author Ralf S. Engelschall.
       Instead he has officially joined the Apache Group and gifted the
       complete sources to it (removed the shared copyright), so further
       development takes place directly at the Apache Groups source
       repository. No more version synchronizations are needed in the future.
       Additionally the rewriting engine was both enhanced and cleaned up by
       introducing a generic way to interpolate backreferences. The noticeable
       effect is that one now can use backreferences at nearly any string
       construction point (RewriteRule subst string, RewriteCond test string,
       ENV flag key/value, etc.) to access the parts of RewriteRule and
       RewriteCond patterns via $N and %N.

  *) Simple transport and i/o hooks in place
       It is possible to re-define the standalone_main function 
       (with -DSTANDALONE_MAIN) so modules may plugin support for
       transport protocols other than tcp, e.g. DCE RPC
       A new slot in the BUFF structure `t_handle' is provided to
       store the plugin's transport related structures.
       Support for sfio can be enabled with -DB_SFIO, which allows
       modules to re-define lowest-level reads and writes so i/o
       may travel through something other than a tcp socket.
       In addition, sfio support allows plugin modules to manipulate
       the output of all modules, e.g. parsing the output of CGI programs.
       
  *) New dbmmange script
       A new Perl5 version of dbmmange allows modification of
       various databases, Berkley DB, ndbm and gdbm.  Security has 
       been tightened such that passwords will no longer be echoed to
       the terminal, the seed for srand is more random and `add' will not
       overwrite and existing user, use the new `update' command
       instead.  New commands include the `check' command to check a
       users' password and the `import' command to convert existing
       password text-files or dbm files exported with `view'. 

  *) New API function: is_initial_req()
       The function returns true only for the initial call during a
       given HTTP request.  If the request is a sub-request or
       internal redirect, the function will return false.