- From: William A. Rowe Jr. <wrowe@rowe-clan.net>
- Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:27:57 -0800
- To: ietf-http-wg@w3.org
On 12/8/2011 12:33 PM, Karl Dubost wrote: > > Le 8 déc. 2011 à 14:55, Larry Masinter a écrit : >> I think Karl's rewording is worse. The point I really wanted to make was that documents that follow HTTP terminology often make the mistake of assuming a "user agent" has a "user". > > Ahah! I didn't have the initial context. :) > >> But if "client" means the same thing as "user agent", then why have a separate term? > > > I would rather prefer client everywhere too. > > What wikipedia says: > > In computing, a user agent is a client application > implementing a network protocol used in communications > within a client–server distributed computing system. > — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent We just had this discussion at the ASF httpd project. In a proxy chain, each proxy server is a user agent itself reaching out to the next server in the chain. It is possible to describe these each as clients, but when you start looking at end-to-end definitions, "client" suggests the originating user agent (app, or browser, or service). So UA and client do have distinct connotations.
Received on Thursday, 8 December 2011 22:28:33 UTC