Re: Accept-Charset support

# Does the 406 response include some information on what "charset"s would
# indeed be acceptable? If not, some of the considerations that I made
# in other mails to this list seem to suggest that "sending an unacceptable
# response" may be rather better than not sending anything.

Unautomated reply from your "HTTP/1.1 specification reading service":

# 10.4.7 406 Not Acceptable

# The resource identified by the request is only capable of generating
# response entities which have content characteristics not acceptable
# according to the accept headers sent in the request.

# Unless it was a HEAD request, the response SHOULD include an entity
# containing a list of available entity characteristics and location(s)
# from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate.
# The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content-
# Type header field. Depending upon the format and the capabilities of the
# user agent, selection of the most appropriate choice may be performed
# automatically. However, this specification does not define any standard
# for such automatic selection.

#  Note: HTTP/1.1 servers are allowed to return responses which are
#  not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the request.
#  In some cases, this may even be preferable to sending a 406
#  response. User agents are encouraged to inspect the headers of an
#  incoming response to determine if it is acceptable. If the response
#  could be unacceptable, a user agent SHOULD temporarily stop receipt
#  of more data and query the user for a decision on further actions.


And, with regard to getting your very own copy of the HTTP/1.1
specification, please check for

	draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-07.*

# To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
# "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
# Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe),
# munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or
# ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).

Larry

Received on Thursday, 5 December 1996 08:25:27 UTC