Re: Straw-man for our next charter

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:53 AM, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net> wrote:

> [snip]
>
> Explicitly out-of-scope items include:
> * Specifying the use of alternate transport protocols. Note that it
>   is expected that the Working Group will define how the protocol is used
>   with the TLS protocol.
> * Specifying new semantics for HTTP (whether specific to HTTP/2 or not).
>   However, the Working Group may request a re-charter to start work on such
>   items (during or after work on HTTP/2.0), provided there is consensus to
>   do so, and it does not interfere with work on the "core" (both HTTP/1.x
> and
>   HTTP/2.0).

[snip]

I do not believe new semantics should be entirely out of scope within the
new charter. Particularly in that there are opportunities to..

A) Utilize the transport more efficiently through the use of
binary-encodings of header fields
B) Improve internationalization support by requiring UTF-8 in
character-based header values
C) Improve intermediary support through the introduction of protocol-level
routing tokens that can begin to replace the clumsy and hackish use of
cookies
D) Explore the possibility of in-stream encryption and integrity mechanisms
such as my proposed SPDY KEY_NEGO frame.
E) Provide for millisecond-level resolution within date headers,
particularly Last-Modified and If-Modified-Since
F) Require support for trailing headers

And I'm sure there are others that simply aren't coming to mind at the
moment. Yes, each possible change or addition to existing semantics would
need to be carefully considered with backwards compatibility in mind, and
we would need to carefully consider each individual change.