- From: Jeffrey Mogul <Jeff.Mogul@hp.com>
- Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:12:23 -0800
- To: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- cc: "ietf-http-wg@w3.org Group" <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
The Working Group's sole specification deliverable is a document that
is suitable to supersede RFC2616.
I'd like to suggest another deliverable (possibly not a true
"specification"), which could either be a separate document
or possibly a new section in rfc2616-bis.
This would be a description of which other HTTP-specific RFCs
are effectively part of the HTTP standard. I can think of
a few off the top of my head:
RFC2145: Use and Interpretation of HTTP Version Numbers
RFC2817: Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1
(if only because it defines the HTTP Status code registry!)
RFC4229: HTTP Header Field Registrations
I suspect there are others that could be included, but my memory
fails me for now. And there are probably some for which there
will be signficant debate as to their value and status. (What
about more recent standards that retroactively constrain HTTP
implementors, if any? e.g., character sets?)
My suggestion is based on the observation that some implementors
look at RFC2616 as the entirety of the "HTTP specification", because
there are no obvious pointers from that document to the others.
Hence we have repeated discussions on this mailing list about
how proxies should handle version numbers (for example).
I'm not suggesting that we include true extensions, such as
WebDAV, in this category -- although I suppose that argument
could be made, I wouldn't be the one to make it.
-Jeff
Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2007 19:13:18 UTC