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README

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+CLASH - The Common Lisp Adaptable Simple HTTP server
+====================================================
+
+This package is a very simple, yet adaptable HTTP server for various
+implementations of ANSI Common Lisp.  Since this package was born out
+of neccessity ("scratching one's own itch", as Eric Raymond put it in
+[1]), it provides the following feature set, which might or might not
+suit your needs:
+
+* CLASH is as simple as was possible to achieve the given objective of 
+  serving static and dynamic content to various new and old clients,
+  as well as allowing for the creation of static snapshots of parts of
+  the served document tree for off-line distribution.
+
+* It's very adaptable, since I never knew what features would be
+  needed next.
+
+* It's as portable as possible, requiring only few changes to make it
+  run in other implementations capable of supporting serious HTTP
+  serving.
+
+* It's under a very unrestrictive and clear licence, mostly X-style.
+  There exist a number of HTTP servers for CL already, but most of
+  them are under licences which are quite vague, and wouldn't stand up
+  in court, thus putting any user under too much of a risk.  Since
+  CLASH has been explicitly put in the public domain, this shouldn't
+  be a problem, minus the ever present danger of software patents.
+
+  For information on the conditions of use and copying that come with
+  CLASH, see the file COPYING included in the distribution.
+
+If CLASH suits your needs, use it as you wish.  If it doesn't, take a
+look at the following packages, which might suit your needs better
+(and which are quite impressive in their feature sets):
+
+* CL-HTTP
+
+  This is a very impressive and comprehensive implementation of HTTP
+  (including HTTP/1.1), HTML and XML generation, advanced user
+  interfacing via the WWW, proxying, mirroring, spiders and robots and 
+  many other things.  It runs in nearly all current implementations.
+  See http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/cl-http/home-page.htm
+
+* Closure
+
+  This is the counter-part of CL-HTTP, in that it is a GPLed web
+  browser.  It's still being developed, and although it currently runs 
+  only under Franz' Allegro CL (for Linux/Unix), there are plans of
+  porting this further.
+  See http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unk6/closure/
+
+For further information on the conditions of use and copying that come
+with CLASH, see the file COPYING included in the distribution.
+
+For information on building and using CLASH, see doc/README.