Re: must a partial response range be exact?

On tor, 2008-10-09 at 22:00 +0200, A. Rothman wrote:
> Thanks for pointing that out!
> 
> However, if that is so, then given that "A response to a request for
> multiple ranges, whose result is a single range, MAY be sent as a
> multipart/byteranges media type with one part", the spec MAY have this
> SHOULD clause bite itself as well (in exactly the same sense as
> returning a single Content-Range response)...

There is no contradiction. The MAY only applies if the SHOULD is
fulfilled. A MAY never has higher priority than SHOULD.

The specifications is a sum of MUST and SHOULD requirements, and MAY
hints on possible alternative ways of doing things as long as the MUST
and SHOULDs is also fulfilled.

But implementations MAY disregard SHOULD level requirements if they
insist, provided they understand the implications. Only MUST level
requirements is strictly required.

It's not possible to expand each clause to express the full conditions,
as this would result in the specifications being repeated all over, with
tons of opportunity for contradictions.

Regards
Henrik