Re: v11-03 COMMENT: 16.8 Errors or Incomplete ...

>> So probably the "MUST NOT store the response" in the previous
>> sentence should become "MUST NOT store the response unless
>> it is marked as a partial-content response."  Note, however, that
>> the Content-Range header requires an indication of the total
>> length of the object, so it's not always possible to make use of
>> such a fragmentary response.


Actually, the appropriate editorial work is to recast the description
of caching to talk about external behavior rather than internal
behavior. What a cache stores or doesn't store is internal behavior.
In a couple of cases (copyrighted or authenticated material) we
actually care what a cache does or doesn't store. However, in this
case, the only thing we care about is that the cache not return
partial data as if it were complete data. We're should reserve "MUST"
and "MUST NOT" for things that are requirements of the protocol.

Larry

Received on Wednesday, 15 May 1996 10:58:41 UTC