Opaque

> Dave Kristol wrote:
> I have to disagree:
> 1) Only a few headers need opaque.  We're not burdening all, or anywhere
> close to all, of them.
Of course, but once one adds a special opaque field then everyone who
'owns' a header will add their own, too, citing the precedent.  I'm
looking long-term, here, and seeing (from bitter experience) the thin
edge of a combinatorial wedge, where every header has every possible
combination of attribute from every other header.

> 2) It's a nuisance for the server to have to collate information from
> two different headers.
Not necessarily.  Most servers have to handle several headers already
(Last-Modified-Since, Content-Type, Content-Length, etc.)  Assuming
there's a reasonable internal lookup-by-name

>                         In particular, if Opaque: has pieces that are
> labeled for different other headers (if I understand what you're
> proposing), then a server must, for example, parse both the Session-ID
> and Opaque headers to figure out what's going on.  It's much simpler to
> keep all the information together and parse a single header.
>
> If you're assuming that there's a relationship between the value of
> Opaque for Session-ID and the value for WWW-Authenticate, I think
> you're wrong:  I don't think they have any connection.  Certainly
> there's no obligatory connection.
>
> Dave Kristol
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Received on Thursday, 27 April 1995 10:41:39 UTC