Re: Problems with draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-07

Roy T. Fielding:
>
>>> > A remark regarding 14.1 Accept:
>>> > It's a pity there is a "q=", but not a "mxb=".  An oversight or
>>> > intentional?
>>> 
>>> The conneg group decided it "wasn't needed" based on the observation
>>> that browsers didn't implement it.
>> 
>> There is a way in the latest lynx code to specify it via the .mailcap
>> file, and I understand that the Apache server can make use of it.
>
>You should ask Larry if the issue can be reopened and mxb restored.
>I personally feel it was a mistake to remove it, and since we have
>already missed the boat on getting HTTP/1.1 implemented in the most
>recent wave of browsers, we might as well get it right.

If we want to do it *right*, we should not re-introduce mxb, but
introduce an Accept-Length header.  

I did not just remove mxb because it was unused, I removed it because
it was was the kind of unused cruft that brings a protocol much closer
to the point at which no extension is possible anymore because of
interference effects.

Personally, I think people vastly overestimate the good a `don't ever
send me something longer than X bytes' mechanism can do: if this
actually was useful, browsers would have `abort all transfers longer
than X bytes' configuration options by now.

But if we are going to have such a mechanism, we at least need to make
it orthogonal to the other negotiation headers.

> ...Roy T. Fielding

Koen.

Received on Thursday, 22 August 1996 05:15:22 UTC