Re: Required DIFF format [was Re: PATCH Draft]

Lisa Dusseault wrote:
> That's true.  To be more clear, what I had in mind was requiring a MTI 
> diff format for one particular case, that of a server that stores 
> resources exactly as the client PUTs them, and the GET result is also 
> byte-for-byte identical.  This is a fairly common case, particularly 
> among WebDAV servers.  
> 
> For resources that are stored exactly the way they appear on the wire, I 
> cannot think of a case where a binary diff is going to cause problems. 
> 
> Thus, the language I'd proposed was something like:
> 
> In order to improve potential interoperability, servers that store 
> resources unchanged 
> (or can apply deltas as if resources are stored unchanged) are 
> RECOMMENDED to 
> support [FOO] as a common-denominator approach.
> 
> The problem with this is not the desirability of it -- for any server 
> that wants to support PATCH and returns byte-for-byte identical 
> resources, it's desirable to have a PATCH format that clients are likely 
> to know.  The problem is rather that there is no binary patch format 
> with a legitimately registered MIME type.  

And that's why we don't want to make a normative requirement here at 
all, right?

That being said, I'm happy to start work on a *simple* format that would 
work well in the WebDAV case.

Best regards, Julian