RE: issue 85 - range unit extensions

Julian Reschke wrote:
> Mark Nottingham wrote:
> Playing the devil's advocate: is there *any* range unit other 
> than "bytes" we can think of that is indeed independent of 
> formats? Right now, I can't think of any.
> 
> So if we strongly believe in this requirement we should 
> probably consider to close this extension point. That being 
> said, maybe that requirement is too strong.
...
> That's quite some effort for something where we're not sure 
> whether it's going to be used. Should we consider delaying 
> the registry until later?

> > Furthermore, Section 6.2 - the BNF says:
...
> > This does not allow other range units to be used. If we keep them, 
> > this BNF needs to be changed to something like:
...
> > Note that section 6.2 places several requirements on the use of the 
> > Content-Range header which assume that byte-ranges are in use; we'd 
> > need to adjust the language appropriately.

I agree with Julian. It seems like a lot of work for something that is
probably never going to interoperate. Since the RFC 2616 grammar and section
6.2 don't even allow for other units it would be best to remove the
extension point. 

If the extension is going to stay because of Microsoft's rows extension,
then it should accommodate their syntax. There's no point in specifying a
grammar that nobody will use and that will be violated by the most common
use of the extension point.

- Brian

Received on Tuesday, 5 August 2008 16:51:59 UTC