RE: Comments on section 9.8, TRACE

I would just make a general comment here: it is true that in most cases
it is easy to infer
common sense answers to these questions, e.g. it is common sense not to
check the resource
identified by the Request-URI of a TRACE request. The point is though,
for some reason I still believe 
that a good, solid specification should rely less on common sense
answers and more on clearly stated
definitions, descriptions, terms etc. (even if this implies a reasonable
amount of redundancy). I believe
this leads to a rapid and reliable implementation (and that's how you
get a big, ugly, hard-to-read yet 
complete ANSI standerd :).

--Catalin


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Dave Kristol [SMTP:dmk@bell-labs.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, May 27, 1998 12:15 PM
> To:	artg@cs.nyu.edu
> Cc:	http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com; Louis Discepola; Catalin Floristean
> Subject:	Re: Comments on section 9.8, TRACE
> 
> ...
>  
> 2) I think the student is trying to read too much into the
> specification.  The description of the response says only that the
> request message should be returned as an entity.  It says nothing
> about
> checking the Request-URI or the resource so-identified  The topic of
> what to do when something is unstated often comes up in discussions
> here
> (and I often raise them :-).  If the specification doesn't say to do
> something anywhere, then don't do it.  In this case, a server might or
> might not check the syntax of the Request-URI, but it need not check
> the
> resource so-identified.
> 
> ...