Re: First reactions to mandatory draft
From: Scott Lawrence (lawrence@agranat.com)
Date: Wed, Jan 21 1998
Message-Id: <199801211431.JAA05341@devnix.agranat.com>
To: Paul Leach <paulle@microsoft.com>
Cc: ietf-http-ext@w3.org
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 09:31:34 -0500
From: "Scott Lawrence" <lawrence@agranat.com>
Subject: Re: First reactions to mandatory draft
>>>>> "PL" == Paul Leach <paulle@microsoft.com> writes:
PL> 23-Skidoo and 65-SKidoo are _not_ the same header, so they
PL> shouldn't be folded.
>>>>> "SL" == Scott Lawrence <lawrence@agranat.com>:
SL> They are for CGI purposes after the prefixes have been removed (or
SL> are we going to require that CGIs also understand prefixes?).
PL> Of course. How else would you do it? The headers could be changed so that
PL> they were independent of the prefix (change the numeric prefix to the URL of
PL> the extension, e.g.), but the two uses of the same suffix need to be
PL> disambiguated somehow.
If we consider the case of an implementation that includes some
number of extentions but does not attempt dynamic extensibility,
then there should be no conflicts - if I want to extend my server
with 2 extentions that are incompatible, I'll either do just one and
forget the other, or I'll try to get them changed to be compatible.
In neither case do I need to disambiguate the headers dynamically,
because I just won't do it; I don't think that such a choice should
mean that I can't use the 'Man' header field (and its siblings)
mechanism. Given this constraint (which I think will be the norm
for a large set of implementors), and if the dynamic prefix
mechanism is to be left in for the wild experimentalists who need it
(which I don't object to in itself), then I need a way to respond to
a message that says 'I understand the extention you declared in the
Man header, but I don't understand prefixes so send it
unqualified'.
--
Scott Lawrence EmWeb Embedded Server <lawrence@agranat.com>
Agranat Systems, Inc. Engineering http://www.agranat.com/