Re: [RFC] HTTP Information Request

On Thursday 21 June 2007 20:27, Larry Masinter wrote:
> This proposal seems to fall into the same trap that most proposed
> HTTP extensions fall into: there's no motivation to deploy this
> in clients because most servers don't support it, and no motivation
> to deploy this in servers, because most clients don't support it.

I don't wont to think like this because:
a) this way noone will ever change anything in HTTP except from Microsoft
b) the only certain way to fail is not to try
c) the web has changed a lot during the last 2 years

> Unless you have a better story for how this will get deployed,
> its mainly an academic exercise.

I strongly believe that this will interest eshops, google and microsoft. It is 
a framework that may change the way we interact with the world wide web.

> That's the general problem. The specific problem with this
> is that it's a kind of reverse content negotiation, and many

I don't think of it as content negotiation. It is more abstract and can be 
described as on-demand information submission. What the information will be 
is up to everyone's imagination. Preferences and device description is just a 
part of it. User information is another.

Consider two types of information:
a) Fixed - Timezone, CC/PP etc
b) User defined - Name, address, hobbies, etc

> There's been a great deal of work in this area, most of
> it not deployed (for reasons above), e.g.,
>
> http://www.imc.org/ietf-medfree/ in IETF and
> http://www.w3.org/TR/CCPP-ra/
> http://www.zurich.ibm.com/ucp/

Are these comparable with what I'm proposing? I'm talking about content 
negotiation. Just for sending client side information on demand.

> In general, media negotiation in HTTP hasn't been successful,
> see note & following discussion:

OK. Lets forget the 'media'. Do you believe that this is not a good thing to 
have or that people (companies and clients) will not be interested in?

Received on Friday, 22 June 2007 10:26:58 UTC