Re: 301/302

On Fri, 5 Sep 1997, Ben Laurie wrote:

> Scott Lawrence wrote:
> >   If a server gets a request labeled HTTP/1.1, it should
> >   treat it as one and respond with 1.1; the complexity of looking at
> >   User-Agent values and making some decision based on them is too much
> >   to contemplate (especially since many browsers lie in thier
> >   User-Agent headers).
> 
> Practical experience has shown us (the Apache Group) that it is not
> possible to deploy a fully compliant HTTP/1.1 server without making
> allowance for broken browsers.
> 

Yes, but this is not an issue of broken browsers.  It is a question of
*all* correctly implemented browsers, and which versions of them
support which version(s) of HTTP.

I have the greatest respect for the Apache project.  What you have
achieved is truly remarkable and I am a big fan.  But if your 1.1
servers use 303 and 307 then as soon as 1.1 proxies appear there will
be a lot of broken transactions.  I see no way around this except
never to use 303/307 and revert to 302.  Perhaps I am wrong.  I hope
so.

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