- From: Jim Gettys <jg@pa.dec.com>
- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 13:19:46 -0800
- To: "David W. Morris" <dwm@xpasc.com>
- Cc: John Franks <john@math.nwu.edu>, Dave Kristol <dmk@research.bell-labs.com>, http-wg@hplb.hpl.hp.com
See section 3.5; I believe it is clear on the topic. The tokens refer to algorithms; not programs. gzip An encoding format produced by the file compression program ``gzip'' (GNU zip) as described in RFC 1952 [25]. This format is a Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77) with a 32 bit CRC. compress The encoding format produced by the common UNIX file compression program ``compress''. This format is an adaptive Lempel-Ziv-Welch coding (LZW). Use of program names for the identification of encoding formats is not desirable and is discouraged for future encodings. Their use here is representative of historical practice, not good design. For compatibility with previous implementations of HTTP, applications SHOULD consider ``x-gzip'' and ``x-compress'' to be equivalent to ``gzip'' and ``compress'' respectively. That a particular implementation chooses to use a gzip program that happens to also handle compress is an implementation issue; it should declare what algorithms it actually implements. Note the historical note. We been here before, and done this folks. - Jim
Received on Tuesday, 3 November 1998 13:23:10 UTC