Beta release of MiniVend 3.12

[mike@minivend.com]

******    message to minivend-users from mike@minivend.com     ******

Dear All,

I have put up the beta release of MiniVend 3.12. There are some
major additions -- in particular the simple demo has been extensively
reworked.

I would like to get this one nice and solid before final release,
so please pound on it as much as you can.

(Note that I consider this beta to be more solid than 3.11, and I
run it on all servers I administer, including several that take
many, many, hits per day. Your mileage may vary, of course.)

The WHATSNEW document is appended.

Mike Heins                          http://www.minivend.com/  ___ 
                                    Internet Robotics        |_ _|____
Fast, reliable, cheap.              131 Willow Lane, Floor 2  | ||  _ \
Pick two and we'll talk.            Oxford, OH  45056         | || |_) |
 -- unknown                         <mikeh@minivend.com>     |___|  _ <
                                    513.523.7621 FAX 7501        |_| \_\



                  W H A T ' S   N E W 

MiniVend 3.12 is a bug-fix release, but due to the author's
uncontrollable case of feeping creaturitis, it adds a few new features.

New features: 

    * Major rework of the "simple" demo. (The HTML in that demo
      was circa 1995 when the first work on MiniVend was done.)
      Made it into the cookie-cutter style favored today.

    * Added a new demo, "flycat". Documentation is sparse, will
      remain sparse, and is totally located in the README.flycat
      page.

    * Rolled the former demonstration add-on feature UserDB.pm
      into the main distribution. Added a [userdb ....] tag which
      performs operations like login, logout, password change, etc.

    * UserDB is now completely documented, and has MANY new 
      features.

    * Added four types of access control based on User database
      login. The preferred method uses a .access_gate file to specify
      per-page access -- this is demonstrated in the demo with the
      [page reconfig/reconfig] page and is completely documented.
      Another simple method allows checking of page names before loading;
      a db_acl allows checking for read/write permission on a database;
      and a file_acl allows read/write checking on file names. The two
      latter ones are only enforced by your own programs; the simple
      integrated method can be automatic.

    * Added user-definable fields and command scripts to the command-line
      makecat procedure.

    * Added rudimentary documentation on building your own catalog
      template.

    * Added [import table type] tag for importing database
      records. Supports all types including NOTES, the best mode to use.

	* In my continuing quest to get people to use the UserTag
	  capability, provided a few new ones in the demos -- notably
	  a summary tag that is employed to total shipping weight in
	  the demo.

Bugs fixed:

    * Due to persistent Perl problems with signal handling, the
      default demo is now distributed with PIDcheck enabled.
      New behavior when PIDcheck is in force is to reset the
      number of active servers based on the presence of PID files,
      while still rate-limiting to MaxServers iterations between
      housekeeping checks. The SafeSignals directive is deleted
      (it will generate a deprecated warning but allow startup
      to continue).

      This problem would occasionally cause busy servers to
      "freeze" as they reached and failed to go below the MaxServers 
      level.

      If the PIDcheck directive is set, the number of servers will
      be automatically adjusted every HouseKeeping seconds according
      to the pid files.  The recommended value for PIDcheck is now
      180-600 seconds; the demos will come set to 300.

    * Fixed "bad search column" error when searching the first
      column of the products file or key column of a file.

    * Fixed security hole allowing user-specification of absolute
      search file names.

    * Fixed error with CyberCash number formatting when 
      using a non-english number format (i.e. spaces and
      commas in non-english places).

    * mv_sort_field works even without mv_sort_command.

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