- From: Benjamin Franz <snowhare@netimages.com>
- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 08:53:19 -0800 (PST)
- To: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
On Sun, 12 Nov 1995, Gavin Nicol wrote: > >Pull the blinders back off. IGNORE PDF. There is a general problem with > >restarting partially transmitted documents that that is just a special > >case of. We need a method of saying *for any document what-so-ever*: > >"Send me bytes 10000 through 20000". > > Wrong. We need a method of saying "Send me pieces n to m". > > BTW. Your argument that EOL conversion by servers is "badly broken" is > also wrong. I fully expect to see servers capable of coded character > set and encoding translation appearing in the very near future. For > such servers, byte ranges are simply BAD (Broken As Designed), because > a byte might no longer be the atomic unit of information, and because, > as Chuck pointed out, the server would have to convert *everything*, > and then select the piece requested. On consideration - the EOL conversion issue is just another red herring. It simply doesn't matter to the question of byte ranges. Byte ranges *clearly* should apply to the transmitted byte stream - not the server side representation of said byte stream. And one way or another the byte stream is *always* generated. And unless your conversion is non-deterministic the byte-stream will always be the same from the same source document for a given GET request. The byte is inherently the atomic unit of information in HTTP. What connects a server to a client *is* a byte stream. End point representations of that byte stream should be completely irrelevant to the issue of byte ranges. -- Benjamin Franz
Received on Monday, 13 November 1995 08:46:30 UTC