Re: Byte ranges -- formal spec proposal

>Minimal support for fragmentation (i.e., there are places where the object
>can be split): PDF, Quicktime (certain codecs), HTML (?),
>"mailbox-message" format plain text.
 
HTML is not fragmentable in a meaningful manner. Tp fragment HTML, you
must first parse the document, and if you do that, byte ranges make
almost no sense as a unit of fragmentation. I will be sending an RFC
out one day about this.

>To repeat: just because a file's fragments aren't valid file types on
>their own doesn't mean they're not useful.  They might be valid in the
>context of some other file type which has inlined them.  For example,
>let's say I have an HTML file like this:
> 
>..
>   An example of VRML:
>   <PRE>
>   <A REL="EMBED" HREF="http://host/foo.wrl?byterange=22342-22401"></A>
>   </PRE>
> 
>Whereas the object representation the URL pointed to was not a valid VRML
>file, and thus was not typed VRML, but was perfectly embeddable in HTML.
 
What happens if this range of bytes actually references a document
that has changed recently? The user will get a page with a (probably)
garbage sample. Not robust....

Received on Saturday, 20 May 1995 02:07:07 UTC