Possible erratum in Part 1, section 9.4.

Editors of HTTPbis,

Thanks for all your work on this rewrite of RFC 2616. I am reading both 
that RFC and your new document as part of work for on a "profile" of 
HTTP for a web service standard (OGC and ISO's Web Map Service). So far, 
the new version has greater clarity and shows better organization which 
is great for us readers.



In HTTPbis, Part 1, Section 9.4, the fourth(ish) paragraph states:

The Host header field MUST be sent in an HTTP/1.1 request even if the
    request-target is in the form of an absolute-URI, since this allows
    the Host information to be forwarded through ancient HTTP/1.0 proxies
    that might not have implemented Host.

but I do not understand this ending "implemented Host". I guess this 
might be an erratum which should instead read something like

    ...
    that might not have implemented *support for absolute-URI in the
    request-target*.

since HTTP/1.1 makes a big deal of requiring this support for future 
versions of the protocol. (Reading this ending as 'implement support for 
the "Host:" header' makes the sentence nonsensical to me.)

Regardless, the phrase "implement Host" should be clarified.


cheers,
   ~adrian custer

Received on Wednesday, 22 June 2011 12:15:53 UTC