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CoSy Classic
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Intro
Classic CoSy was originally designed as a command-line, text-only system. Users would log on directly to the host computer and interact directly. As PCs became more capable, and as graphical user interfaces (GUI) more popular, several independant efforts were put forth to develop graphical front-ends for CoSy, carefully coded to use the prompt-response interface that CoSy provided. Some of these were quite popular.
These GUI front-ends were "fragile", in the sense that minor changes in CoSy's responses -- which were intended for human users -- could confuse and break the programs. It is also much more difficult to design client software to use a human-oriented protocol than one designed specifically to support such programs.
The WebCoSy protocols -- primarily CSTP (CoSy Transfer Protocol) -- are designed with this in mind.
Models
In Classic CoSy, all the user interface "smarts" are built into the CoSy program itself, to allow users to access the system via the dumbest of dumb terminals, if that's all they have.
With the simplest form of WebCoSy, the user interface resides on the user's computer, in the form of a client program. This client communicates with the CoSy server via the CSTP protocol. (Provision can be made for direct access via dumb terminal by having a client designed for that purpose residing on the server.)
More interesting possibilities exist. See .....(what?)
CSTP
CSTP or CoSy Transfer Protocol comprises the rules governing the "conversation" that the client and server computers engage in. At the command (or request) and response level, the protocol is very similar to common Internet protocols such as SMTP and NNTP. At the data level (messages, etc), the information conveyed in XML, the growing standard for data exchange.
The CSTP protocol is described in the CSTP - CoSy Transfer Protocol document.
XML
XML, or Extensible Markup Language, is becoming the standard for exchanging self-describing data between applications. All CSTP data exchanges are via XML packets or "documents".
Documentation for CSTP's XML formats (DTDs and schemas) is here. (link)
Download
A fairly simple CSTP server, cstpd, is available for download. (link?) The cstp library is also available? ...? See also Download page?
On the client side, we have (what? JCoSy2? Text-based?)....
Finally
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