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Re: Proposal for new HTTP 1.1 authentication scheme

From: John Franks <john@math.nwu.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 08:46:38 -0600 (CST)
To: Dave Kristol <dmk@bell-labs.com>
Cc: Paul Leach <paulle@microsoft.com>, Jim Gettys <jg@pa.dec.com>, Scott Lawrence <lawrence@agranat.com>, fielding@kiwi.ics.uci.edu, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971210083354.6784A-100000@hopf.math.nwu.edu> 
On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, Dave Kristol wrote:

> 
> Notwithstanding John Frank's new message about "What is Content-Length",
> I don't want to invoke some kind of apocalyptic revision of the spec.
> and what Content-length means. 

I also don't want an apocalyptic revision.  But I honestly read the
spec and believed, based on section 7, that the Content-length header
should contain the entity length.  Clearly others believe that it
should contain the message length.  The issue hasn't arisen before
because in (nearly?) all implementations these two agree in all
instances where there is a Content-length header.

The distinction will become increasingly important, and indeed is
already for the entity-digest in authentication.  For interoperability
the spec has to be very clear on whether the Content-length header is
the length before or after TE is applied.  In my view it currently
explicitly states contradictory things in sections 7 and 14.

John Franks
john@math.nwu.edu
Received on Wednesday, 10 December 1997 06:33:28 EST

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