- From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:48:03 +1100
- To: Brian Smith <brian@briansmith.org>
- Cc: "'HTTP Working Group'" <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
This is <http://www3.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/104>. Cheers, On 27/02/2008, at 12:49 PM, Brian Smith wrote: > > The specification repeatedly says that "unrecognized header fields > are treated as > entity-header fields": [Part 1, section 4.5], [Part 2, section 4], > [Part 2, section 6], [Part 3, section 4.1]. However, it also says > that unrecognized header fields MAY be treated as response and/or > request headers. > > The BNF for extension-header is "extension-header = message-header". > > Here are several issues: > > * In practice, applications cannot usefully classify an unrecognized > header, and they definitely do not treat them as entity headers. > Declaring them to be entity headers adds confusion with no benefit. > > * The BNF for extension-header matches all other header types. That > means that when a client includes a response-header in a request, or > a server includes a request-header in a response, the header is to > be treated as an entity header. That doesn't make any sense. > > PROPOSAL: > > * Remove the statements that say that unrecognized header fields are > treated as entity-header fields. > > * Move the extension-header definition to Part 1, and replace the > ABNF for Request, Response, and trailer-part: > > Request = Request-Line ; Section 5.1 > *(( general-header ; Section 4.5 > | request-header ; [Part2], Section 4 > | entity-header ; [Part3], Section 4.1 > | extension-header) CRLF) > CRLF > [ message-body ] ; Section 4.3 > > Response = Status-Line ; Section 6.1 > *(( general-header ; Section 4.5 > | response-header ; [Part2], Section 6 > | entity-header ; [Part3], Section 4.1 > | extension-header) CRLF) > CRLF > [ message-body ] ; Section 4.3 > > trailer-part = *((entity-header > |extension-header CRLF)) -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Thursday, 28 February 2008 00:48:19 UTC