- From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:53:22 +1100
- To: HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
<http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/93>
Discussion in Vancouver centred around whether advice about error
handling in HTTP should be added; Roy Fielding offered to come up with
exact text for this, but the sense of the room was that we should
document why HTTP doesn't have a single approach to error handling
(such as when multiple values are present for a single-valued header),
because (as I remember the discussion):
1. There is no one "right" answer; different kinds of clients -- or
the same client in different situations -- may need to act differently
upon an error, for most kinds of errors (there may be exceptions), and
2. Specifying behaviour for handling every conceivable error isn't
possible, attempting to do so will seriously bloat the specification,
and will not significantly improve interoperability.
We'll wait for Roy's text to see if there's consensus, but if you have
a problem with this, speaking up sooner rather than later would be good.
Regarding the other part of the issue ("MAY... if and only if" vs.
"MUST NOT... unless"), I'd like to call that portion of the issue
editorial, and let the editors worry it out.
Cheers,
--
Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Sunday, 23 December 2007 11:53:46 UTC