CGI in Mac Classic (8.6)

[Robert Brenstein]

>Hello everyone,
>
>I am currently experimenting with MacOS-Classic CGIs.
>I want to thank Liang Tyan and Robert for their help.
>The *script* provided in Liang Tyan's reply was
>particularly useful to me. I've got a MC-based CGI now
>running on my server. Awesome! :))
>
>New problem : so far, the CGI only works when the
>client is a web-browser. When the client is a MetaCard
>stack it become buggy. When the version of the
>client-side stack is 2.4 then nothing happens. No
>error dialogs, but also no results whatsoever. When
>the version of the client-side stack is 2.5 then it
>does was it is supposed to, but only on the *first*
>try. On subsequent tries with v2.5, MC says "error :
>previous request not completed". I wait a while, and a
>"socket timeout" dialog appears ... everytime!!!  What
>is going on ???
>
>Inference : It seems like a socket is being remaining
>open that needs to be closed. This is not something we
>would normally need to attend to when we're using
>simple syntax like "put url myURL". Therefore, I
>believe that it is a BUG [for MacOS-Classic]. I hope
>I'm wrong and that there is something simple that I am
>overlooking.
>
>Help!
>
>Alain Farmer

Alain, you may want to provide a few more details of your setup as 
the above is somewhat confusing. Where are the sockets coming in 
from? Not on the server I think. As I understand, your CGI talks to a 
web server program (are you using MacHTTP or sth else?) using 
AppleEvents. The web server talks to a client using HTTP protocol. If 
the client uses an MC stack instead of a normal web browser, it still 
has to talk HTTP to the server. So if there is a problem, it would 
seem to have nothing to do with your CGI per se but with the client 
stack. Or are you trying having the client stack bypass the server 
and talk directly to CGI? If so, your CGI must act as a server not as 
a CGI then.

Robert