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Re: Proposal: 205 Bodies [#88]

From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 21:06:54 +1000
Cc: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
Message-Id: <0C2B7A95-BB1E-4B3F-BD0E-EFD7AB7EB6CD@mnot.net>
To: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>
I.e., allow entity bodes on 205?

*shrug* In the scheme of things, it's not that important, I suppose,  
since they're not widely used. However, it seems you'd have the same  
philosophical debates either way -- "what is the meaning of an entity  
on a 205 response" vs. "what is the meaning of the entity headers on a  
205 response"?



On 08/06/2009, at 9:03 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> On Jun 8, 2009, at 12:43 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:
>
>> Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>>> ...
>>> Big objection.  205 was added late in the process of 2068 and
>>> could not be grandfathered into the message parsing algorithm
>>> as yet another (bad) exception.  The requirement that 205 not
>>> include an entity means that the message-body MUST be of zero size
>>> (i.e., Content-Length must be supplied with a value of 0
>>> or Transfer-Encoding chunked is used with a zero-length chunk).
>>> Hence, it is correct as specified, albeit confusing.  It will
>>> be less confusing when the terminology is cleaned up.
>>> ...
>>
>> Yes, I was wondering about that (and duplicated language about  
>> special cases in Part 1 & 2).
>>
>> So, shouldn't we change part of the description for status 205 from
>>
>> 	"The response MUST NOT include an entity."
>>
>> to
>>
>> 	"The response MUST include a zero-length entity."
>>
>> ?
>
> I think that would lead to more philosophical arguments than simply
> removing the sentence (it is a stupid requirement).
>
> ....Roy
>


--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Monday, 8 June 2009 11:07:30 UTC

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