Re: Comments on Byte range draft

Simon Spero wrote:
> 
> Just a few points:
> 
> If the byte range is carried in the URL, and is generated by the client,
> then the client needs to know whether or not the server suports byte
> ranges before generating the request- otherwise the request will be
> rejected. If the information is stored in a header, then servers that
> don't understand the header will just send the entire object.
> 
...
> I'd go for the later approach. Add nocache to make sure that proxies
> which don't understand byte-ranges don't cache it, and add another pragma
> to reenable caching for proxies which do understand byte-ranges.
> 
> Request-
> X-Byte-Range: [start]-[finish]
> 
> Response-
> Pragma: no-cache, cache-if-you-understand-byte-range
> X-Byte-Range: [start]-[finish]
> 

We don't need a hack here.  Using a 205 response to signify a 
partial document is being returned seems far better than 
the "no-cache" nonsense.  The 205 response is also necessary
for the client to tell the difference between a full document 
and a partial document response.

:lou
-- 
Lou Montulli                 http://www.netscape.com/people/montulli/
       Netscape Communications Corp.