- From: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>
- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 97 16:47:37 PST
- To: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
It currently says:
In theory, the date SHOULD represent the moment just before the
entity is generated. In practice, the date can be generated at
any time during the message origination without affecting its
semantic value.
I don't think it makes sense for a normative keyword such as "SHOULD"
to be preceded by "In theory", except if this is clearly marked as
a "Note". This would be very confusing to someone trying to figure
out if this is a real SHOULD, or just a theory.
How about
In theory, the date ought to represent the moment just before the
entity is generated. In practice, the date can be generated at
any time during the message origination without affecting its
semantic value.
In fact, if you read 14.19 carefully, it never has any actual
normative requirement on what the Date value MUST or SHOULD be
(except for this "in theory"). But perhaps what we really meant
to say, before the paragraph quoted above, is:
The HTTP-date sent in a Date header SHOULD NOT represent a date
and time subsequent to the generation of the message. It
SHOULD represent the best available approximation of the date
and time of message generation, unless the implementation has
no means of generating a reasonably accurate date and time.
-Jeff
Received on Thursday, 11 December 1997 16:48:57 UTC