Re: Official Apple II documentation?

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, Tony Cianfaglione wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, Bill Garber wrote:
>
> > > On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, drkenb wrote: 
> > > > All of the documentation at www.Apple2Online.com is in PDF format, not 
> > > > text documents. 
> > >
> > >    Attempting to access that URL renders an HTTP 1.1 406 error - whatever 
> > > that means. 
> >
> > Not for me. Bill
>
>   I just tried it again.  It says:
>
>   Alert!: HTTP 1.1 error 406 Not Acceptable.
>
>   and then renders the following:
>
>
>                                Not Acceptable
>
>   An appropriate representation of the requested resource / could not be
>   found on this server.
>
>   Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to
>   use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
>
> References
>
>   0. http://www.Apple2Online.com/
What browser were you using?

Two or three years ago, I suddenly started getting 406 errors.  I use
Lynx, the text-only browser, and since I started using it in 1996, there
ahve been  a relative handful of websites that I couldn't access.  Mostly
they had Flash on the intro page.  Sometimes there'd be a message that
I couldn't access the page with my browser, though oddly one could usually
bypass that warning and most of the site would be fine.  There have been
lots of pages that might be better with a graphic browser, but very few
pages that I couldn't use Lynx with.  It's pretty common to see pages
telling me that I'm using a browser that can't do frames, yet those
pages are accessible, you just see the frames on a separate page.

But the 406 error was something new, and it was definitely because
something, I thought the server software (rather than the webpage
itself) was checking the browser.  I did a search at the time,
there was some Big Eplanation, but the reality was simply if I changed
the User Agent Header to anything but Lynx, I had no problem.  The 
explanation at the time said it was because of something lacking in
Lynx, but it just struck me that the server was checking the browser
type, and rejected Lynx (and nothing else).  I could put nonsense
in the User Agent Header, and have no problem.

There seemed to be a variant the next year.  I'd get an error message,
I think still 406, but I could access the page (so maybe the error message
doesn't come).  But instead of being able to view specific pages, I
get what may be the main page, and can't go to any of the links
from there.  Last year, I tried changing the User Agent Header, and I
still had the problem (either that, or I didn't do something right).
This year, changing the User Agent Header to anything but Lynx got
me access to the page.

Note that links, which is another text-only browser, doesn't have this
problem. It has a few features that Lynx is missing, but I suspect the
real issue is that Lynx is well known, while any other text-only browser
sees a whole lot less useage, so the server just checks for Lynx, assuming 
that's all that will matter.

  Michael