Re: ISSUE-255 (the mdot thing): Subdomain and Path as a heuristic in content transformation [Content Transformation Guidelines]

You make a good point (hastens to add that this is far from unusual :-)) 
when you note that the title of the section is

  4.1.2 Proxy Decision to Transform

and that is not actually what the section is about.

My point here is that this section is really about "proxy forwarding of 
request" I think the title is a hang over from a earlier versions in 
which is was suggested that the proxy might or might not offer 
transformation services etc. which is actually what it says in the text. 
I think this definitely needs clarification.

Either way, the way it is now, the proxy will not decide whether to 
transform the response at the time of the request. What it will decide 
is whether to alter the headers (based on user preferences, or prior 
knowledge that the server will reject the request) or not. Are we now 
adding that if the request is to m.whatever then this is an additional 
case in which the server will alter the headers? That seems incoherent 
to me - why would you alter mobile headers to desktop headers when you 
are making a request to a site that is likely to be mobile friendly? 
That would be counter-productive, surely?

Jo

On 06/06/2008 16:45, Francois Daoust wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:
>> ISSUE-255 (the mdot thing): Subdomain and Path as a heuristic in 
>> content transformation [Content Transformation Guidelines]
> [...]
>> a couple of questions:
>>
>> i) on the request side, how does the URI requested constitute a 
>> heuristic, if we are saying that the headers should not be transformed 
>> a) unless the user requests it and b) unless the request is rejected?
> 
> I'd say the same way as "the HTTP method of the request" which is in the 
> list as well, does.
> It refers to the proxy's intention to offer transformation services, and 
> not to the proxy's transformation of the request headers.
> 
> 
>>
>> ii) on the response side, I think we may mean the URI of the response 
>> (i.e. content-location or the result of resolving redirects, rather 
>> then the originally requested URI, and if that is what we mean we 
>> should say so ....)
>>
> 
> You're absolutely right for the Content-Location case, and for any 
> redirect that would be initiated by the CT-proxy (when the CT-proxy 
> discovers a <link alternate="handheld"> typically).
> 
> But as for regular 302 redirects, isn't the redirection supposed to be 
> done on the end-user side? In that case, from the point of view of the 
> CT-proxy, there should be no difference between the requested URI and 
> the URI of the response (provided there's no Content-Location header in 
> the response). Best explained with an example:
>  1. user sends a request on A
>  2. CT-proxy sees request on A
>  3. server responds with a 302 to B
>  4. CT-proxy lets redirect response A go by
>  5. The user agent sends a request on B
>  6. CT-proxy sees request on B
>  7. server response with response for B
>  8. CT-proxy applies CT on B. For the CT-proxy, the request associated 
> to B is on B, and not on A.
>  9. The user sees response B for his/her request on A and is a happy user.
> Am I missing something?
> 
> Francois.
>

Received on Friday, 6 June 2008 16:07:12 UTC