Re: HTTP response version, again

As I said in my reply to Dave, any resolution of this issue should be
consistent with section 3.1 of RFC 1945:

3.1  HTTP Version

   HTTP uses a "<major>.<minor>" numbering scheme to indicate versions
   of the protocol. The protocol versioning policy is intended to allow
   the sender to indicate the format of a message and its capacity for
   understanding further HTTP communication, rather than the features
   obtained via that communication. No change is made to the version
   number for the addition of message components which do not affect
   communication behavior or which only add to extensible field values.
   The <minor> number is incremented when the changes made to the
   protocol add features which do not change the general message parsing
   algorithm, but which may add to the message semantics and imply
   additional capabilities of the sender. The <major> number is
   incremented when the format of a message within the protocol is
   changed.

This seems to favor choice 2) below.

Dave Kristol liltingly intones:
> 
> I still consider the question unresolved as to what version an HTTP/1.x
> server should return for an HTTP/1.0 request.  I claim the draft
> (section 6.1) does not specify it:
>     "The first line of a Response message is the Status-Line,
>     consisting of the protocol version followed by ..."
> 
> To review (minus the pros and cons), the issue is whether the server
> should return (1) HTTP/1.0 (the version of the request) or (2) HTTP/1.1
> (the version the server software understands).  The concern people have
> expressed is that in the first case you could never determine whether a
> server understands HTTP/1.1.
> 
> ...edited for brevity...
>

chuck
Chuck Murcko	N2K Inc.	Wayne PA	chuck@telebase.com
And now, on a lighter note:
Shaw's Principle:
	Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
want to use it.

Received on Friday, 20 December 1996 15:16:29 UTC