Re: qvalue *

Frank Ellermann wrote:
> ...
> So far it is simple, and no reason to talk about it in the
> spec.  Now back to our Accept-Charset cases cases, assume
> that Koi8-R, BOCU-1, and UTF-8 are available:
> 
> All match *;q=0.7.  Toss a coin ?  Take always the last,
> i.e. for utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 take the * and toss a coin ?
> 
> This is _relatively_ harmless (unless you get BOCU-1 and
> your UA can't handle it, obviously).  
> 
> But it is strange when the <qvalue> of * isn't one of the
> smallest non-zero <qvalue>s, and I'm surprised that folks
> here refuse to see it.

It is a problem if it occurs in practice. Does it?

> But why ?  If everybody does something else the wildcard
> can be simply deprecated.  Or if desired fixed in some
> way, e.g., state that a wildcard <qvalue> greater or
> equal than the smallest non-zero <qvalue> elsewhere MUST
> be interpreted as *;q=0.001.  Or SHOULD.  Or something
> better than "dunno, who cares, toss a coin, get BOCU-1".

Of course we can spend time on edge cases like these.

But if we do, I'd prefer to talk about repeating Content-Length or 
Content-Type headers first, because those may have security implications.

As a matter of fact, we *did* discuss those a few months ago, and 
decided not to include error handling instructions into the spec.

So why start here, without any evidence that we're working on a problem 
that indeed affects people?

BR, Julian

Received on Monday, 4 August 2008 19:22:35 UTC