- From: Martin J. Duerst <mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch>
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:58:07 +0200 (MET DST)
- To: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>
- Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Jeffrey Mogul wrote: > [OOPS. My previous message was missing one very important sentence, > regarding when "identity" content-codings are implicitly allowed. -Jeff] > (2) Replace section 14.3 (Accept-Encoding) entirely with > > 14.3 Accept-Encoding > A server tests whether a content-coding is acceptable, according > to an Accept-Encoding field, using these rules: > (1) If the content-coding is one of the content-codings listed > in the Accept-Encoding field, then it is acceptable. (Note that, > as defined in section 3.9, a qvalue of 0 means "not acceptable".) > (2) The special "*" symbol in an Accept-Encoding field matches > any available content-coding. > (3) If multiple content-codings are acceptable, then the > acceptable content-coding with the highest non-zero qvalue is > preferred. > (4) The "identity" content-coding is always acceptable, unless > specifically refused because the Accept-Encoding field includes > "identity;q=0", or because the field includes "*;q=0" and does > not explictly include the "identity" content-coding. If the > Accept-Encoding field-value is empty, then only the "identity" > encoding is acceptable. A lot of what is written above turns up exactly the same in Accept-Charset, Accept-Language, and so on. In many cases, there is something special, but not too much. Is there a way to organize the text different? This would hopefully a) save space, b) help getting an overview, and c) make things more consistent. For example, with respect to "*", the general description could say that: "*" in an accept field matches any value possible in that accept field, including a default. A q-value given to "*" applies to all values, including the default, but except those that are explicitly present. An accept field may not allow "*", or may use a more elaborate syntax for this functionality. Such cases are explicitly mentionned in the description of the field itself. Similar texts could explain the use of a default, the meaning of q=0 (this seems already done to a certain extent), and so on. For "Accept-Encoding", we would then just have to list the possible values and identify the default. Regards, Martin.
Received on Wednesday, 23 July 1997 04:39:29 UTC