How many coding registries should we have? (Issue 143), was: Issue 189, Re: Content/Transfer-Codings organization/IANA considerations (issue 143, 188, 189)

On 07.08.2009 18:59, Julian Reschke wrote:
> ...
> So they really should be defined separately from Transfer-Coding and
> Content-Coding, and be collected in the same registry (surprise: IANA
> already has both in "http-parameters").
>
> Feedback appreciated...
> ...

As far as I can tell, this is the one remaining issue related to ticket 
143 (<http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/143>).

The current status is:

- IANA has two registries (transfer coding and content coding), which 
*both* are maintained at <http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters>

- Part 1 defines Transfer Codings, the Transfer Coding registry, and 
updates the transfer coding registrations

- Part 3 defines Content Codings (referring to Part 1 for the 
compression codings), the Content Coding registry, and updates the 
content coding registrations

- Both registries have been clarified/modified to require spec & expert 
review

The open question is:

- Do these two registries share the same namespace? That is, is it 
allowed for a coding named X to be both a transfer and a content coding, 
and have incompatible definitions?

I think this would be a very bad idea, so we really should unify the 
registries to a single coding registry, and then have new entries state 
as which type (transfer/content) they can be used. My assumption would 
be that any transfer coding could be a content coding, but that the 
opposite is not true.

Feedback appreciated,

Julain

Received on Thursday, 8 April 2010 14:06:49 UTC