- From: Eric J. Bowman <eric@bisonsystems.net>
- Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 13:28:02 -0600
- To: Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com>
- Cc: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
Adam Barth wrote: > > That's the interesting question for folks who wish to generate the > header. The question for folks who want to consume the header is > different. The operative question is "what single semantic theory > captures the intended semantics of the largest number of messages > generated in practice?" These two things are quite likely to be > different in this case. (I'm writing up a longer message explaining > this statement.) > I understand what you mean perfectly well. I still don't see the relevance of that dichotomy to HTTP. Why should C-D generation be defined in terms of handling syntax that was never specified? Why should such implementation details even be included in HTTP? Why *isn't* 99% interoperability of the conformant syntax good enough? > > > I do not see the relevance of user agent implementation concerns, to > > HTTP defining what constitutes conformant messaging syntax. > > Indeed. It's precisely this lack of caring about the concerns of user > agent implementors that's causing the problem. > Browser vendors. If addressing your concerns means that all user agents are expected to behave like browsers, then my perspective is that it would reflect a lack of caring about the concerns of anyone else implementing HTTP. What's right for browsers isn't necessarily right for wget/curl, in fact the diverse re-use of those two user agents is evidence that it would be impossible to come to consensus on HTTP if its scope were to include implementation instructions for user agents. Some things are best left unspecified, rather than impossibly overspecified. -Eric
Received on Sunday, 3 October 2010 19:28:47 UTC