Re: Fwd: draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-rev-04 comments

Some comments on Paul Bennet's comments:
[It's reassuring to come upon someone else who can be as nit-picky as I
am. :-)]

>  * Section 5.1.2 "Request-URI", p33, second para talks about
>    replacing 'a null abs_path with "*"' - surely it's replaced
>    with a "/".

I was about to say, vigorously, "no", but now I think I'm just confused
about just what the point is of that paragraph.  The paragraph says:

       Request-URI    = "*" | absoluteURI | abs_path
[...]
In requests that they forward, transparent proxies MUST NOT rewrite the
"abs_path" part of a Request-URI in any way except as noted above to
replace a null abs_path with "*", no matter what the proxy does in its
internal implementation.

If "abs_path" in the paragraph refers to the non-terminal in the
Request-URI production, then I have to ask, how can it be null in the
first place?  When is Request-URI null?  OTOH, if we're talking about
the "abs_path" that's part of the "absoluteURI", then I might be
inclined to agree with Paul.

>  * Sections 9.3 "GET", 9.4 "HEAD" and 9.7 "DELETE" don't explicitly
>    rule out the presence of an entity-body, as section 9.8 "TRACE"
>    does.

That's because we've discussed the possibility that, some time in the
future, it might make sense to include an entity-body for them.

Dave Kristol