HTTP/1.0 draft 02

Hi all,

After receiving a unanimous "yes" response to splitting the draft 01
document into a "Best Current Practice" HTTP/1.0 and a standards-track
HTTP/1.1, I have completed work on the initial BCP draft.

My guidelines for inclusion in the HTTP/1.0 spec were that each specified
feature must be correctly and consistently implemented on approximately
80% or more of the currently existing clients and servers.  I am hoping
that the WG will agree to that restriction so that we can reach consensus
on this document in near-immediate terms.  Once the guidelines have
been approved, they will be included in the Introduction of the next draft.

Draft 02 is available at the usual places (below) and has been submitted
to the IETF.  It is available in plain text, HTML, and PostScript
(w/changebars), and a text diff is also available (generated by
the "diff -b -c1 draft01 draft02" command).

     http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/
      ftp://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/
and
     http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Protocols/Overview.html

Since I expect any changes to this draft to be controversial, please
send such comments directly to the WG and not to the authors.

Draft 01 remains available for those wishing to see what HTTP/1.1
will look like (modulo a few corrections already noted on the list).
I am hoping to get an initial HTTP/1.1 draft completed before Friday,
to forestall any confusion generated by the suddenly-missing features
from HTTP/1.0.

I am currently operating upon the assumption that the HTTP/1.1
document will only contain stuff already determined to be
required for the correct implementation of currently deployed
HTTP features.  As such, the only things I am planning to add are
the Proxy Authentication features (part of earlier drafts, but removed
due to the need for a new version number) and Digest AA.
If the addition of those two features is objectionable, I'd like
to hear about it now [I believe both have been adequately implemented?].

On a related note, I would like to ask the authors of the Digest AA
draft to begin work on an updated version which will act as a
tag-along to the HTTP/1.1 standard.  I believe that this would be
better than attempting to include it in the main document, since
the Digest AA may be subjected to more thorough scrutiny.
This work must be completed as a product of the HTTP-WG, though
the authors should also engage the input of the WTS-WG.

Happy reading,

 ....Roy T. Fielding  Department of ICS, University of California, Irvine USA
                      Visiting Scholar, MIT/LCS + World-Wide Web Consortium
                      (fielding@w3.org)                (fielding@ics.uci.edu)

Received on Monday, 14 August 1995 13:44:26 UTC