RE: What is Content-Length?

On Wed, 17 Dec 1997, Paul Leach wrote:

> Before we can just "resolve quickly", I'm worried about the possibility of
> existing implementations of (e.g.)
> 
>    Content-Length: XXX
>    T-E: gzip
> 
>    <gzipped stuff, XXX bytes long>
> 
> which means that C-L is, defacto, the length of the message-body.
> 
> Absent info on such an implementation(s), we can invent lots of internally
> consistent schemes, but they wouldn't conform to existing (presumably) RFC
> 2068 compliant implementations.

But then "Transfer-encoding: gzip" would be an extension to RFC2068. 
It seems to me that by the rules, an extension we haven't heard about
can be ignored as experimental and subject to the risk of requiring
adjustment as standards change.

Dave