19 June 1997
Written by Michael Newbery, whose personal web pages are at <http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~newbery/>.
Katipo is currently at version 1.0B19
Katipo finds any documents that have changed since the last time you viewed them. It writes a report file which you read with your web browser that lists these documents, in a format which allows you to easily visit them.
Katipo uses a special feature of the web which allows it to check for changes without loading the whole document, so it is efficient. (Katipo doesn't download any documents, it just checks their characteristics.)
Katipo will run automatically every night so that the changes are available to you next day.
Katipo only checks for HTTP URLs, not Gopher, FTP etc.
Katipo depends on your browser maintaining a global history file, recording the URLs and the time last visited.
Katipo is Freeware.
The Macintosh Web Browsers currently supported by Katipo are:
Other Verity Mosaic derived browsers just keep the history file in the Preferences folder and typically call the file something like V-Mosaic History.html or PW-Mosaic History.html or somesuch.
For version 3.x the global history file is called Mosaic Global
History and is kept in the NCSA Mosaic folder, in the
Preferences folder, in the System Folder.
Further documentation on Katipo can be found here.
Katipo requires a Macintosh running MacOS 7.0 (or more recent version) and MacTCP or OpenTransport. It uses the Drag manager if present and requires Threads support for parallel queries (both of these are standard with MacOS 7.5 or later).
Katipo runs in a 128kB partition and takes up 124kB of disk, and Katipo Setup runs in 96kB and occupies 105kB of disk. If your global history file is particularly large you may need to set Katipo's partition size up. (Katipo reads the whole global history file into memory at the beginning of its run. If it can't find the memory in its partition it will try for temporary memory first before giving up.)
Katipo would prefer Internet Config to be present, and some features only operate if it is present.
There is no Windows, Unix, OS/2 or TRS-80 version available or planned.
As soon as you have filled this out, Katipo Setup will launch Katipo, and will continue to do so, once a day at the time nominated, for so long as Katipo Setup is running.
Katipo is currently at level 1.0B19 It is a Beta test version! Use at your own risk.
Follow this link if you are interested in being a beta tester.
A Request For Comments. Please send me some email if you have any comments on Katipo, especially ideas for enhancements etc.. Even just to let me know you are using it.
http://host, http://host/ and
http://host:80/are all identical, and the browser is supposed
to reduce them all to one. Similarly for http://host/~user and
http://host/%7Euser. Most don't bother, so Katipo may
visit the same URl several times. A fix would require that Katipo
canonicalise and remember each URL as it is processed, and compare each new
URL it processed, ignoring duplicates. This would double the memory requirements.
katipo
Etymology: Maori.
A small, black, venomous New Zealand spider, Latrodectus katipo, closely
related to the Australian jockey spider (or red back) and the American black
widow.
(The picture was drawn using Lari Software's free LightingDraw Lite.)