- From: Erik Aronesty <earonesty@montgomery.com>
- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 12:34:21 -0700
- To: 'Jeffrey Mogul' <mogul@pa.dec.com>
- Cc: "'http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com'" <http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
definition of a u-a-p: a readable and understandable file transmitted via. HTTP to a client .... it is similar in content if not identical to the equivalent HTTP headers which it purports to encapsulate there should never be a NEED to use a u-a-p for a browser ...although it will be more efficient ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????? >---------- >From: Jeffrey Mogul[SMTP:mogul@pa.dec.com] >Sent: Monday, August 12, 1996 12:52 PM >To: jg@zorch.w3.org >Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com >Subject: Re: Conventions for Sharing User Agent Profiles > > If a user agent profile is a URL, rather than some silly static > database, there is no monopoly involved; a server would just > fetch the profile from the URL when first talking to the client, > and cache it. > > Unless such a cache of profiles were tiny, it is very likely that > any significant server will have profiles for almost any user agent > in use (and you can roll your own, anyone who has the ability to > provide a web page, and since this seems to be standard these days > with Internet accounts by ISP's, this means everyone). > > This is the scheme Simon Spero suggests in his NG work, and it >looks > like a fine one to me. > >It has some obvious advantages (indirection is often a Good Idea >in computer systems design), but I can think of several problems >that could make it difficult to implement universally. > >How would this work, for example, in an isolated intranet (one >in which, by policy, no access to the Internet is allowed)? Would >the intranet's operators have to mirror the set of user agent >resources internally, and perhaps rebind the URLs for the browsers >used internally? Or build a translation table for the internal >servers to use? > >How would this work in a flakey Internet (supposing that, in >spite of our current efforts, Internet reliability gets worse >rather than better)? I.e., a server has a less-than-100% chance >of actually reaching the user-agent-profile URL? > >What are the security implications of trusting the Internet >to deliver the correct user agent profile? (Not that we necessarily >do any better today!) > >Anyway, I would guess that if we can come up with a standard >encoding for the u-a-p resource pointed to by a u-a-p URL (and >which would be a prerequisite for any such scheme) then with >a little more effort we might be able to come up with compressed >encoding that could be transmitted in the request headers without >many more bytes that it would take to transmit the u-a-p URL. And >transmitting it in-band does solve the problems that might arise >from indirection. > >So perhaps the first order of business is to think about what the >u-a-p would actually encode, before thinking about what the most >efficient way to transmit it might be. After all, as you pointed >out in another recent message, special-purpose encodings can yield >impressive compression ratios. > >-Jeff > >
Received on Monday, 12 August 1996 12:49:03 UTC