In this issue

Apache Site: www.apache.org
Release: 1.3.9 (Released 20^th August 1999) (local download sites)
Beta: None

Apache 1.3.9 is the current stable release. Users of Apache 1.3.6 and earlier on Unix systems should upgrade to this version. Users of Apache on Windows can now upgrade to Apache 1.3.9 avoiding the previous problems with Apache 1.3.6. Read the Guide to 1.3.9 for information about changes between 1.3.6 and 1.3.9.

Most bugs listed below include a link to the entry in the Apache bug database where the problem is being tracked. These entries are called "PR"s (Problem Reports). Some bugs do not correspond to problem reports if they are found by developers.

These bugs have been found in 1.3.9 and will be fixed in the next release. Because of the major differences between Windows and Unix, these are separated into bugs which affect Windows systems only, and other bugs (which may affect Windows as well). Unix users can ignore the bugs listed in the Windows section.

Windows-specific Bugs

• A faulty comparison was being made in the ISAPI module causing problems when Apache was compiled with the Borland C compiler. PR#4333, PR#4887

Other Bugs

• Each time a wildcard handler is invoked, a warning is written to the error_log file. PR#2584, PR#2751, PR#3349, PR#3436, PR#3548, PR#4384, PR#4795, PR#4807
• Apache is missing various exports needed to allow mod_perl to compile under AIX
• Some broken compilers cannot deal with the register type in combination with long long when compiling Apache.
• If an error ocurred compiling in the src/support directory, Apache would continue to build.
• A number of fixes for the TPF platform have been made

Patches for bugs in Apache 1.3.9 will be made available in the apply_to_1.3.9 subdirectory of the patches directory on the Apache site. Some new features and other unofficial patches are available in the 1.3 patches directory. For details of all previously reported bugs, see the Apache bug database and known bugs pages. Many common configuration questions are answered in the Apache FAQ.

The HTML page displayed by default when Apache is installed has been translated into a selection of other languages. Currently Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portugese, Luxembourgeois, Spanish and Swedish translations have been submitted.

Even from version 1.1.1, Apache has been able to serve different language versions of a document transparently to a user based on browser preferences. Over the years the standards for language negotiation were fixed (being specified in the HTTP/1.1 protocol), and more browsers started supporting the standard. Most modern browsers now allow the user to select and prioritise the languages they can read and hence let the server decide which language version of a page to send. This powerful feature of Apache is often overlooked, and the addition to the standard distribution of the translated initial page will show how easy it is to configure and use. Some more background to content negotiation is available in an Apache Week feature from July 1996.

Most common browsers allow the user to select the languages they prefer. Browsers should also let the user prioritise the languages for when the server has a number of matches. Although recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer correctly allow the prioritisation of langauges, others such as Netscape Communicator do not. For these browsers apache has a LanguagePriority setting to let the server administrator decide which languages will be sent if there are multiple matches.

By default, Apache writes log files in the Common Log Format (CLF). This format logs the request sent to the web server, rather than the details of the actual resource that was sent. If you wish to keep a track of which language was sent with each request you should use a custom log format and either add a field to give the actual filename that was sent, or alternatively log the contents of the "Accept-Language" header sent from the browser.