Serving .xws files

If you plan to make .xws files available from a Web server, you will also need to configure your Web server so that it sends the appropriate MIME type encoding (application/x-wavescript) whenever a browser requests a .xws file. (When you use a browser to read a local file, this is not required, since no Web server is involved in this case; rather, the local .mime.types file is used by the browser to recognize the type based on the file suffix.)

To configure the Apache httpd (at this time, the most widely-used Web server), find the file httpd.conf (typically in /etc/httpd/conf) and add the line

  AddType application/x-wavescript .xws
in the section that contains other AddType directives. Restart the server to force it to reread srm.conf. The NCSA httpd and variants of it can be configured in the same way; if you use the CERN httpd, the syntax of the AddType directive is different:
  AddType .xws application/x-wavescript text
If you use some other Web server, consult its documentation to see how to proceed.

Note that readers of Web pages with a link to a .xws file will need to have WAVE and wavescript, as well as the WFDB record indicated in the .xws file, available to them on the system on which their Web browser is running.

Note that if you attempt to read a .xws file before completing the necessary configuration steps, your browser's cache may interfere with proper operation after the configuration is completed. If this happens, simply delete any .xws files from your browser's cache.

George B. Moody (george@mit.edu)
2019-03-08