Re: Accept headers and media parameters

On Wed, 6 Sep 1995, Roy Fielding wrote:
> There are two ways to do content negotiation: preemptive or reactive.
> I think preemptive content negotiation is doomed to failure in the
> long term, which is why I added the 300 response code.  When the
> day comes that preemptive content negotiation (Accept* headers) are
> more costly than reactive (an extra round-trip carrying a URC),
> then browsers and server can switch without changing the protocol.

...what Roy is also forgetting to say is that the "an extra round-trip 
carrying a URC" is a 406 response, and the format of that response is 
what should be decided *very*soon*, so people can start putting it into 
their browsers and servers.  Don't wait for the URC folks to do it.  It 
also implies that a request for an-object-with-many-variants will return 
a list of metadata associated with objects-with-only-one-variant.  

	Brian

--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--
brian@organic.com  brian@hyperreal.com  http://www.[hyperreal,organic].com/