- From: Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 14:41:02 +0100 (MET)
- To: Dave Kristol <dmk@bell-labs.com>
- Cc: masinter@parc.xerox.com, state@xent.w3.org, http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com
Dave Kristol: > >At 8:38 AM -0800 3/1/97, Larry Masinter wrote: >>This morning, I started having some really bad second >>thoughts about the state of cookies. Here are some >>hard questions (intended to be provocative): >> >>a) if we're not going to be compatible, why call it a "cookie" >> at all? It's not all that descriptive. "Set-state" and >> "state", for example. > >Strangely enough, I was having similar thoughts. I think that `cookie' is more mainstream than `state' at this point. 2^N end users have seen the word `cookie' in a popup and/or article. > I agree with your >argument in favor of a change. The argument in favor of >Set-Cookie2[/Cookie2] is to convey similarity of concept and behavior. Please tell me: do you want to 1) completely revise a proposed standard 2) fix a bug in the downwards compatibility scheme of a proposed standard I find you leaning towards 1), which will require a new last call as far as I am concerned. <---[intended to be provocative!] I would rather do 2). I want the state-mgmt standard to replace the `NS cookie preliminary specification ad-hoc standard' as soon as possible. [....] >> It's a bad precedent to revise a proposed standard >> for non-technical reasons, and only because one of >> the implementors didn't actually read the spec at >> the right time. > >I'll let Yaron Goland argue that one.... Aaaaargh. Larry, your question is fatally misinformed. Dave, your answer is even worse. We are not revising the standard because Yaron did not read the state-mgmt spec. MSIE 3 has a valid implementation of the ad-hoc NS cookie `standard'. It never claimed to support state-mgmt. The thing that is broken is the state-mgmt downwards compatibility scheme. The state-mgmt spec writers did not actually test the compatibility scheme with MSIE at the right time. This is hardly Yaron's fault. This is not a forum for MS bashing. The misallocaton of blame will not get us out of this mess. >Dave Kristol Koen.
Received on Sunday, 2 March 1997 05:45:20 UTC