Authoring requirements and changes on PUT (Re: I-D ACTION:draft-whitehead-http-etag-00.txt)

   In section 2, under "Authoring Requirements":

   pp.2: I think we want to add to the query: "... and if so, does  
this change result in a semantically equivalent document?"

   pp.4: I'm not sure I agree that the client needs to be able to  
tell the server that it's not allowed to modify the document.  We  
need a specific use case.  Presumably, if the server is modifying the  
document, it should know something about how to safely do so.  Even  
binary formats may be reasonably editable by servers.  For example, a  
server might add JPEG metadata or ID3 tags into an MP3 file.  My  
concern would be that clients might just ask for this to play it  
safe, and thereby eliminate the flexibility this affords servers.   
For example, I bet that WebDAVfs authors would be very tempted to use  
this all the time, and then not be able to talk to servers that they  
should be able to.

	-wsv