Re: Re[2]: Straw-man for our next charter

In message <em704e4b8a-ca78-4787-810d-6b51e6587714@bombed>, "Adrien W. de Croy"
 writes:

>Do we even need C-T if clients are sniffing anyway?

Actually not.

If we want maximum efficiency and lowest latency, the content should
always use some kind of efficiently compressed format for content.

Most A-V content do so already, and self-indentify as a result.

In fact, about the only content which does not automatically compress
is XML, HTML, CSS, ASCII and Javascript.

Unfortunately the readily available general purpose compression
standards only identify the compression algorithem and not the
content in the compressed bitstream.

But I think this would work:

	Remove the C-T header.

	Mandate that content be compresssed with a self-identifying
	compression.

	Mandate support for gzip compression of content, with an optional
	MIME type in the gzip "comment" header field.

The important detail that would make this work in practice, is
that GZIP has a no compression mode, where bytes are just framed
by other bytes, so in the rare case of a precompressed but not
self-identifying data type, gzip can provide the identification
without the overhead of repeated compression.

-- 
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Received on Monday, 30 July 2012 07:23:58 UTC