Re: Call for Closure - HTTP response version

On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Simon Spero wrote:

> On Mon, 30 Dec 1996, sameer wrote:
> 
> > > HTTP/1.7, etc responses. That of course means no HTTP/1.x header can
> > > ever contain something which causes problems with HTTP/1.0 clients.
> > 	That's correct. That *is* why it's called HTTP/1.x, and not
> > HTTP/2.x
> 
> This is indeed the design goal; if there are any situations which 
> violate this constraint in such a way as to return incorrect results 
> without signalling an error,  the specification is in error, and must be 
> corrected before being advanced.
>

And I don't think anyone is questioning that this behavior is correct.
 
> If there are such cases, then there needs to be some emergency repairs; 
> if there are no such cases, the following is always safe, and will always 
> use 1.1 when available:
> 
> 1) clients which support HTTP/1.1 SHOULD  send 1.1 requests
> 
Agreed.

> 2) servers should echo the lesser of the request version and the 
>    supported protocol version.
> 
> Otherwise, I call for a coin flip. 
> 
> Simon
> 
I'm a little unsure about this one, but I wouldn't object.


Anyway, my only point has been that the document is ambiguous about the
function of the version number in the response. I also have my doubts as to
whether it is good design to use this version number to advertize the
servers capabilities--and as I've indicated, this was not my reading of the
spec, but I do admit this is one possible interpretation.

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