Re: Last-Modified in chunked footer

On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Larry Masinter wrote:

> I think there are a lot of 'headers' that might want to appear in
> the 'trailer' from the point of view of the sender, but of course,
> a recipient cache want to use some of the header information to
> decide where to cache the incoming data.
> 
> I don't think we can continue to evalute these one-by-one, though.
> Is there some general principle to apply?
> 

We should keep the alternatives in mind.  In the case of Last-modified-date
for server side includes the choice for many (but not all) servers
will be l-m-d in the trailer or no l-m-d.   In the case of Vary 
for server parsed documents the choice is likely to be an accurate
Vary in the trailer or a "Vary: *" in the header.

A general principle which might make sense is that if the alternative
to the header in the trailer is not sending the header at all, then
we should allow it.  After all, the proxy can ignore it and be no worse
off.  Vary does not quite fit in this situation, but I think a good 
case can be made for it.

However, the spec might say the server SHOULD put headers at the
beginning rather than in a trailer if this is possible.

John Franks 	Dept of Math. Northwestern University
		john@math.nwu.edu

Received on Wednesday, 3 September 1997 09:44:10 UTC