[h-e-w] Gnuserve beta - feedback request

[Guy Gascoigne - Piggford]

So, after quite a bit of dithering on my part (also know as the
'day job'), I've put together a beta of a new gnuserve package.
One which I hope addresses all of the various bugs that people
have mentioned in recent discussions as well as adding some new
features.

Note: Much of this work was actually done by Lennart Borgman,
thanks :)

Changes since previous released version.

The short version (see further down for full details):

* Added -s to gnuclient, to start gnuserve when starting emacs.

* Added -n to gnuclient so bypass path expansion so that
 gnuclient will play well under cygwin.

* Added -w to gnuclientw to cause gnucllient to wait for the edit
 to complete.  Fixed the waiting so that it no longer times out
 prematurely.

* Tightened up the socket code so that by default it listens on
 127.0.0.1 only, this is a security fix.

* Fixed up the lisp code so that you can use customize to
 configure the frame handling.

* Lots of bug fixes.

The long version:

January 2005. Guy Gascoigne-Piggford

1) Added a -n (no expansion) option to gnuclient[w].  This
  bypasses the default expansion of pathnames allowing emacs to
  parse cygwin style pathnames assuming that it has the correct
  elisp installed.  Previously cygwin paths would get mangled.

2) Fixed an bug where gnuclient wasn't waiting until an edit was
  completed before exiting.

3) Allow setting an environment variable, GNU_HOST, to be the
  hostname to listen on. This bypasses the restriction of
  listening on 127.0.0.1 and allows connections from remote
  machines to be handled again.

January 2005. Lennart Borgman

1) Renamed all "server-*" to "gnuserv-*" in gnuserv-frames.el to
  avoid confusing problems when server.el was loaded. (This
  could happen when using customize.) The corresponding changes
  where made do gnuclient.c etc and gnuservauto.el. Added
  aliases for the old elisp function names for those that are
  called from gnuclient(w). Also added an option to gnuclient to
  use the old elisp function names (-o).

2) A minimized Emacs where not always restored when gnuclient(w)
  was called without file name parameter. Corrected.

3) Added gnuservauto.el to the distribution.

4) Remamed gnuserv-frames.el to gnuserv.el

5) Rewrote the error handling slightly and corrected some errors
  in them for Win32. Some changes to getopt for this too.

6) Added gnuserv-ifdefs.el for easier editing of the C code.

7) Added INSTALL.NT

8) Checked if iconic Emacs should be maximized or restored.

October 31, 2004.  Lennart Borgman

1) Added a -s option to gnuclient[w]. This calls gnuservauto.el
  to start gnuserv server.

2) For server/client on same pc 127.0.0.1 is now used. The server
  only listens on this address. This means that no other
  connections can be made. Hopefully this should avoid some
  firewall and security problems. The drawback is that no
  connections from remote computers can be made.

3) if gnuclient[w] is in subdir bin and emacs.exe is in the same
  dir then this is supposed to be emacs bin dir and emacs_dir is
  set according to this instead of reading registry.

4) A slightly modified version of gnuserv.el called
  gnuserv-frames.el with support for customize of frame handling
  was added.

5) Added the file gnuservauto.el

6) Gnuservauto.el is loaded from the dir where gnuclient[w]
  resides.  Gnuserv-frames.el is then loaded from this directory
  too. This means that all files should now reside in the same
  directory.

7) Added the switch -w which does exactly the opposite of -q. (If
  both are given the result is the same as if none of them where
  given.)  This is to make it possible for gnuclientw to wait
  without breaking compatibility. It also allows the use of
  gnuclientw as a drop target on NT4 and Win98.

Todo:

*  Fix the documentation, right now it's pretty out of date.

Installation:

* Either read INSTALL.NT in the zip file and use the new -s option or:
* back up all of the previous gnu*.* stuff from the last package (I did
  say that this was a beta didn't I), then replace gnuserv.el, and gnu*.exe
  with the new versions.  This version should be drop in compatible with
  the last one.

The beta can be found at:

  http://www.wyrdrune.com/Files/gnuserve_beta.zip

The zip contains source and binaries, the source has been tested
with Visual Studio .NET on XP and gcc on Solaris.

I'd really appreciate comments on this, it's been a long time
since this has been updated and I'd like some concrete feedback
on it before declaring it good.

Thanks - Guy