Re: DESCRIBE, impnotes, and https client

We have three problems. Here's what I plan to do about them.

1) The DESCRIBE function makes accesses to https://clisp.org/. This
   has drawbacks:
   - The user cannot do DESCRIBE when an internet connection is not
     available.
   - The documentation that the user accesses does not match the version
     of clisp she is using.
   - https access is currently not implemented in clisp.
   - It violates the user's privacy if other parties can infer by sniffing
     what documentation she is accessing.

   Proposed solution:
   Let clisp use the *installed* documentation (packaged with clisp).
   => No network accesses in this case.
   For "make check" to work before clisp is installed, add a command-line
   option that specifies the location of the doc. (Like option '-N'.)

2) https access is currently not implemented in clisp. But the web consists
   of more and more https.
   For https, one needs SSL support with all its intricacies (TLS protocol
   versions, certificate checking etc.).

   I'm no longer in favour of including something like Drakma in clisp.
   Instead, I believe we need to distinguish the bottom layer (SSL) and the
   layer sitting on top of it (https). Given SSL, https can well be done in
   Lisp. However, the SSL support ought to use a system-wide standard facility
   and the system-wide certificates (/usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/ on
   some systems) - otherwise revocations won't be handled right. This leaves us
   with three options:
     - GNUTLS,
     - openssl,
     - CL+SSL, which is based on openssl.

   I'll go with GNUTLS in the first place, and openssl as fallback (for
   portability).

   Since SSL cannot be applied to random streams, pipe streams, etc., but
   only to socket streams, the result will be a variant of SOCKET-STREAMs
   in clisp.

3) The DESCRIBE function makes accesses to the CLHS on the web. This has 
   drawbacks:
   - The user cannot do DESCRIBE when an internet connection is not
     available.
   - It violates the user's privacy if other parties can infer by sniffing
     what documentation she is accessing.

   Proposed solution:
   Add a facility through which the user can download and install the
   complete CLHS on their system once; this requires acknowledging a license.
   Cf. [1]

Comments?

  Bruno

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23676164/viewing-the-common-lisp-hyperspec-offline-via-emacs


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