Vary vs. new content negotiation sections

Jeffrey Mogul asked me to give my opinion on the relation between
the Vary header proposal at

  http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/%7Edrtr/vary-header-02.txt

and my new content negotiation sections at

  http://weeble.lut.ac.uk/lists/http-caching/0241.html

as input to discussions on the February 2 meeting of the caching
subgroup (I won't participate in this meeting myself).  Here it is:

 1) These two documents do not conflict with each other, both intend
    to define different aspects of HTTP 1.1.  

 2) My text does not define a Vary header, it only refers to a
    (future) definition of a Vary header for un-negotiated resources
    when defining the semantics of Vary for negotiated resources.  My
    document does not restrict the semantics of Vary for un-negotiated
    resources.

 3) My text does not define caching related headers, it only refers to
    a (future) definition of caching related headers for un-negotiated
    resources when defining caching for negotiated resources.  My
    document does not restrict the semantics of caching for
    un-negotiated resources.

 4) Vary and caching of un-negotiated resources can thus `safely' be
    discussed without reading my (long) document.

 5) If the February 2 meeting wishes to discuss variance and caching
    of negotiated resources, it would be nice if the participants read
    my document and various phone conference summaries found in the
    conneg mail archive (http://www.organic.com/public/conneg/mail/).
    Else there is a big chance that they will come up with a content
    negotiation scheme that cannot handle all the cases that content
    negotiation should be able to handle according to the content
    negotiation subgroup.

 6) I do not agree with everything in vary-header-02.txt.  I would like
    to see the questions that Larry Masinter asks about this document in
    http://weeble.lut.ac.uk/lists/http-caching/0237.html answered.

 7) I feel no need to outline my specific problems with
    vary-header-02.txt now.  I expect that the February 2 meeting will
    be able to resolve most of my problems with it without my input.

Koen.

Received on Thursday, 1 February 1996 13:56:07 UTC