Issue #73: definition of deflate encoding

http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/73

As most of you know our definition of deflate is somewhat contradictory
with the referenced RFCs definitions, as is already stated in our
definition:

   deflate
        The "zlib" format defined in RFC 1950 [31] in combination with
        the "deflate" compression mechanism described in RFC 1951 [29].

As result of this inconsistent name selection there is several
implementations that implement "deflate" to literally mean the deflate
encoding without the zlib wrapper.

Proposed solution is to add a note on this fact

                Note that some incorrect implementations may send
                deflate encoding without a zlib wrapper when using this
                encoding.


On a related note I should perhaps also remind you that gzip is actually
also deflate but with a gzip wrapper instead of zlib. To be consistent
or "deflate" term should really had been "zlib". And both are well
defined file format which also happens to be the same name of the
application/library creating the format in question.

Regards
Henrik

Received on Wednesday, 29 July 2009 13:37:46 UTC