Re: Size of the Spec Was:Re: Beyond 1.1

> From: touch@ISI.EDU
> Subject:  
> Cc:  touch@ISI.EDU
> 
> > From http-wg-request@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com Thu Aug  8 10:22:58 1996
> > Resent-Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 18:21:40 +0100
> > To: Peter J Churchyard <pjc@trusted.com>,
> >         http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
> > Cc: hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu
> > Subject: Size of the Spec Was:Re: Beyond 1.1  
> > From: hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu
> ...
> > I's like to take an unpopular position here. I don't think that the
> > HTTP/1.1 spec is too large at all. It may be larger than the average
> 
> There are two distinct issues -
> 	- size
> 	- layers (or separable protocols)
> 
> I would propose that the HTTP/1.1 spec should be split
> more because of the latter than the former.
> 
> There are really distinct protocols:
> 
> 	- object exchange (HTTP)
> 	
> 	- caching (MIME extensions for caching distributed objects)
> 
> 	- non-protocol HTTP extensions (MIME extensions for HTML)
> 
> 	- protocol extensions for persistence
> 		including extensions for chunking and muxing
> 

For any such proposal to be realistic, a number of issues need to
be overcome.  These include:
	1) who would do the editorial work (and coordinate a set of
	documents).  Doing separate documents is more work than one
	document, and I'm certainly not looking for more work to do.
	2) are the sections actually separable.  The current document
	has many "see section xx.xx" cross references; I'm not sure
	such a spit is realistic, though I haven't examined it carefully.
	My gut reaction it is that it is not...

The most sensible suggestions to date from where I sit would be to
split along implementation advice and the strict protocol itself, but
I haven't seen anyone volunteer to help do the actual work.  Without
such editorial help, any such proposal to split the document, if it is
deemed desirable, is fated to be just so much hot air and merely
wasting everyone's time, and I'd strongly suggest it be AFTER it is
moved to Proposed...

			- Jim

Received on Friday, 9 August 1996 11:02:01 UTC