Re: no-transform

"Roy T. Fielding" writes:
> The messages on this thread in support of no-transform (or, I should
> say, in support of transformations) may be accurate, but they do
> not reflect what is currently specified as "no-transform".
> 
> Any change in image formats is a change in media type, not content coding.
> 
> In any case, I do not consider such a beast to be a cache.  If it is
> changing the content of the messages, then it is acting as an
> inter-protocol gateway.  As such, it has nothing to do with cache-control
> and should be left to a more complex negotiating apparatus like PEP.

I do agree that this is a tricky situation but I do not agree that it is not 
a cache problem. An intermediate proxy capable of converting data objects on 
the fly may be the _only_ way that many devices will be able to communicate 
with the Web. For example, small hand-held devices do often not have the 
capacity for resource consuming data conversions to a format that they can 
handle. It will also be realistic to assume that most "common" Web 
applications will not know of these special data formats. Therefore they 
would have to go through a proxy in order to access the Web. Why shouldn't 
that proxy be capable of acting as a cache as well?

Allowing proxy data conversions on the fly is to me an important feature in 
providing an interface between special data formats and common Web data 
formats.

Henrik


-- 
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, <frystyk@w3.org>
World-Wide Web Consortium, MIT/LCS NE43-356
545 Technology Square, Cambridge MA 02139, USA

Received on Thursday, 6 June 1996 08:44:57 UTC