Re: HTTP Content-length question...

>> The problem I am facing is, this header is returned for most kind of
>> objects (image/gif, audio/au etc) but not for text/html.    ...

>If this is the case then it is a server bug! The Content-Length header
>should be sent whenever possible in a full response, and it should certainly
>not have anything to do with the media type in which the object is rendered.

        NO,  it's not as much of a bug as you might at first suspect.
Objects which are text/html should really be converted from LF line
delimiters to CR/LF line delimiters.   That takes more work than just a
quick stat(),  which is sufficient for image/gif and audio/au  (both of
which are sent out as-is in binary).   It is unfortunate that a number
of servers are  "lazy"  and don't  "canonicalize"  text/html correctly.

>I can imagine that the problems can be due to server side includes in the
>documents or dynamic documents generated by scripts.

        Well, yes.   That too.

>Henrik Frystyk                                          frystyk@W3.org
>World-Wide Web Consortium,                              Tel + 1 617 258 8143
>MIT/LCS, NE43-356					Fax + 1 617 258 8682
>77 Massachusetts Avenue
>Cambridge MA 02154, USA
>
>

--
Rick Troth <troth@ua1vm.ua.edu>, Houston, Texas, USA
http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~troth/

Received on Monday, 8 May 1995 18:05:23 UTC