Re: Rev03 changes to 19.2, multipart/byteranges

John Franks <john@math.nwu.edu> wrote:
  > On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Dave Kristol wrote:
  > > [...]
  > > After discussions over the weekend, especially exchanges with Ned Freed,
  > > co-author of RFC 2046, I am amending my proposed changes.  In
  > > particular, most of them go away.  It turns out that a careful reading
  > > of RFC 2046 shows that an extra leading CRLF is unnecessary, and that
  > > the HTTP example was correct.  (Details:  the multipart-body grammar
  > > begins "[preamble CRLF]", which makes the cruft that often precedes
  > > multipart bodies, plus the CRLF that ends it, optional.)
  > > 
  > 
  > Enough people have been confused by this that it is important to
  > have an explicit warning that the leading CRLF is allowed and optional.

I agree it's confusing, and subtle.  How about if there are two cautions:

Cautions:
  1) Additional CRLFs may precede the first boundary string in the entity.

  2) Although RFC 2046 permits the boundary string to be quoted, some
  existing implementations handle a quoted boundary string incorrectly.

Dave Kristol

Received on Monday, 27 July 1998 08:35:01 UTC