Re: http-parameters registry vs RFC 2616

Larry Masinter wrote:
> 
>> http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters is out of sync with RFC
>>2616 which established the registry. Under "HTTP Transfer Coding Values"
>>only "chunked" is listed, while RFC 2616 section 3.6 notes
> 
> 
> RFC 2616 calls for two IANA registries, content-coding tokens
> and transfer-coding tokens.
> 
> Content-coding (section 3.5) should contain
>      gzip, compress, deflate, identity.

Actually, IIUC the 'identity' encoding from RFC2616 was scratched (it was
a dangling holdover from mime body expressions), and just not quite fully
deleted before 2616 went through the final cut.  The errata further dropped
it out of existance.

> Transfer-coding (section 3.6) should contain
>      chunked, identity, gzip, compress, deflate
> 
> Yes, some tokens (gzip, compress, identity) appear in both.

...and mean somewhat different things in the two contexts ;-)

Most client/server pairs only support 'content encoding', while the
'transfer encoding' is omitted (e.g., Content-Length instead), or is
'chunked'.  Examples to the contrary are appreciated.

Bill

Received on Tuesday, 25 October 2005 02:45:29 UTC