Re: A broken browser

robh@imdb.com (Rob Hartill) wrote:
>Gregory J. Woodhouse wrote:
>>
>>I just saw a message from a user complaining she couldn't acces the
>>Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) with Lynx (version 2.5FM on
>>an SGI). Sure enough, this server is running Apache and Lynx is sending an
>>Accept header that includes text/html;q=0.000.
>>
>>Of course, this doesn't mean anything is wrong with the HTTP/1.1 draft, but
>>is another example of how things can break during the transition.
>
>this isn't 1.1 releated. That code was in Apache 1.0 and affects HTTP/1.0
>just as much.
>
>The Lynx problem is to do with SGI compiler optimisation BTW.

	Just to clarify that, Lynx arbitrarily sets the minimum q to
0.001 by doing an

	if (q < 0.001)
	    q = 0.001;

We don't know how the compiler is losing that.

	Lynx always appends a  ,*/*;q=0.001  because if it can't render
the document, nor has a helper app mapped to the Content-Type, it gives
the user a download offer, at which point the user him/herself can
cancel the request.

	My understanding, so correct me if I'm wrong, is that the
q's are preference ratings, so q=0.000 would be lowest preference,
not an "I don't want that".  If no wild MIME type is sent, and
there's no match, the server should send a "Nothing acceptable to you
is available", but with the wild MIME type, it should send something.
I would personally expect that to apply even if a compiler bug caused
Lynx to send a q=0.000.

				Fote

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