Re: HTTP Caching Design

Brian Gaines:
>
>[Roy T. Fielding:]
>>BTW, "cachable" in HTTP means that the response may be reused as the
response
>>for an equivalent future request -- it does not mean just "may be stored".
>>
>
>Roy, you cannot simply assert this,

I think he can.  I believe you are interpreting the word `request' in
the wrong way.  History list browsing commands do not generate
requests in the HTTP sense.

[...]
>Browsers generally use the same cache for the history list as for reuse,
>AND seem to use the same HTTP control mechanisms for both (which is not to
say
>that they SHOULD do so).

They definately should NOT use the same control mechanisms.  Any good
browser implementation should distinguish between two different kinds
of storage: the HTTP cache and the history buffer.  I know lynx does
not, and this is why lynx is an evil browser (though, sadly, it is a
necessary evil browser).

[...]
>It seems clear from the discussion on the caching list that the
history-cache
>needs its own control mechanisms (as in
>http://www.amazon.com/expires-report.html)

In http://www.amazon.com/expires-report.html, we were very careful to
call the history buffer a _buffer_, not a _cache_.  Please do not
destroy the terminology we worked so hard to introduce by talking
about history caches.

>Dr Brian R Gaines               Knowledge Science Institute

Koen.

Received on Sunday, 7 January 1996 22:38:17 UTC