Re: Slight editorial discrepancy in HTTP/1.1 Rev 3

John Chamberlain <jchamberlain@iris.com> writes:

    While reviewing Rev 3 in conjunction with some testing I found this slight
    discrepancy:
    
    In Section 10.4.17 (416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable) it is stated:
    
    "When this status code is returned for a byte-range request, the response
    MUST include a Content-Range entity-header field specifying the current
    length of the selected resource (see section 14.16)."
    
    In section 14.16 (Content-Range) it is stated:
    
    "A server sending a response with status code 416 (Requested range not
    satisfiable) SHOULD include a Content-Range field with a
    byte-range-resp-spec of "*""
    
    The discrepancy is between the directives MUST and SHOULD.

Hmm.  It looks like this is my doing; see
	http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/hypermail/1997q3/0226.html
which proposed both of these paragraphs, later amended by
	http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/hypermail/1997q4/0089.html

I'm not sure why everyone failed to catch this discrepancy last year.

I think the MUST in 10.4.17 probably ought to be changed to be a
SHOULD.  MUST is probably too strong for this situation, since the
underlying goal is to avoid wasting a round-trip for the client
to discover the actual length.  I.e., it's not mandatory for
correct interoperability.

-Jeff

Received on Thursday, 30 April 1998 13:12:02 UTC