- From: Henrik Frystyk Nielsen <frystyk@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 17:58:12 -0400
- To: Rich Salz <rsalz@osf.org>, khare@w3.org, moore@cs.utk.edu
- Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
At 05:34 PM 10/19/96 -0400, Rich Salz wrote: >>> Progress on an extension mechanism is essential because it is the future of >>> 1.x and binary encodings of it. >> >>I realize this is heresy here, but I have to wonder if it's worth >>building the extension mechanism into HTTP. Every protocol needs an extension model, otherwise they will become obsolute before you know it. What PEP is all about is realizing that the current RFC-822 extension mechanism inherited by HTTP in many cases isn't enough. The PEP framework provides three types of services: A) PEP gives the parties the possibility of enquering and enumerating available extensions. B) PEP gives you the possibility of defining three important attributes of any extension: - consequence - what is the consequence of having / not having an extension? - ordering - does extension A come before or after B? - scope - this is partially solved with the HTTP/1.1 Connection header but it needs to be bound to the PEP frame work as well C) PEP helps avoiding header name collisions. Neither of these services are provided by the traditional model of simply adding new headers. I don't say that the existing model isn't enough in some cases - just not en all of them. >I don't think there's anything heretical about "declare victory and >move on." > >I, ,too, don't think PEP is the future of HTTP. Hang on, after much discussion at the Montreal IETF http-wg meeting, it was decided to continue working on Content negotiation, User Agent, and PEP. Please check the minutes as posted to the mailing list http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Protocols/IETF/9606-Montreal/http-wg-minutes.txt This has nothing to do with victory or any other terms borrowed from the battlefield. If you have constructive critisism of the current draft as issued August 19th then you should forward them to this list. -- Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, <frystyk@w3.org> World Wide Web Consortium, MIT/LCS NE43-356 545 Technology Square, Cambridge MA 02139, USA
Received on Sunday, 20 October 1996 15:07:36 UTC