Re: Variant-ID proposal

Argh, no, you don't need any of this stuff.  The Alternates mechanism
must be completely orthogonal to Vary.  Alternates provides a means for
reactive negotiation (i.e., retrieval of a better resource after the
first response).  Vary provides a means of identifying when the server
has engaged in some form of preemptive negotiation.  It is both possible
and quite reasonable for both to appear in a single response, meaning
that the server has chosen what looked to be the "best", but is
also providing Alternates so that the user agent can later choose
something "better".

Vary never affects Alternates and the variant-id part of an EID is
only present when receiving a preemptively negotiated response from
the server.  A server that only supports Alternates will not be
serving preemptive responses, and thus will not NEED any variant-ids.

........Roy

Received on Monday, 15 April 1996 05:58:37 UTC