Re: COPY def'n (was: Comments on draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-06.txt)

At 10:27 AM 2/18/98 PST, Jim Whitehead wrote:
>Once the octer for octet language has been removed, there is no way to 
>verify that a copy operation has performed correctly.  ..
>That said, I do note that the growing consensus of the working group is in 
>favor of removing the "octet-for-octet" language from COPY.

I actually like the 'octet-for-octet' language.  I am not particularly
sympathetic to having an 'intelligent' copy that rewrites resources.

For starters, I think there will always be a need and desire for a
byte-for-byte literal copy.

One example:
 
Suppose I determine that a resource is misbehaving in some way.  It might
have some bad links in it, it might be a buggy program.  Whatever.  I want
to copy it away so I can analyze the problem.  (I often visit Web sites,
see broken links, look at the source so I can either send a detailed bug to
the maintainer, or, when I am lucky, guess what the link was supposed to
be, and get on with my real desire.)

In such a case I would *not* want the server to alter the resource in any
way whatsoever when copying.

So any COPY that claims to be 'intelligent' will need a way to optionally
turn this off.  This to me says that it needs a new header to control such
'intelligence'.

I claim that anyone who wants to support intelligent copying had better
write an extension to WebDAV.

Let's keep DAV simple, and require copying be literal.

Received on Wednesday, 18 February 1998 16:29:33 UTC