Date: Mon, 7 Dec 92 13:05:17 +0100 From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch> Message-Id: <9212071205.AA01755@www3.cern.ch> To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch Subject: HTTP protocol upgrade I propose that the actual form of the upgraged HTTP protocol is as follows. details are in http://info.cern.c/hypertext/WWW/Protocols/HTTP/HTTP2.html. This follows on from the work which Carl Barker did over the summer, but makes it easier to merge with mail-based applications, and includes MIME-compatibility The client currently sends a request GET <url> and that must be recognized by new servers. We extend this in two ways, firstly to make GEt a specific example of a method to be applied to the object denoted by the url, and secondly to add on the same line a third field (ignored by existing servers) whcih gives the protocol number being used. New servers will check out the verstion number and read more data which follows, allowing such extensions as GET /junk/mydoc HTRQ/1.0 From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@info.cern.ch> Accept: text/plain, text/html, image/GIF(0.0,.5) Accept-Encoding: X-Compress, base64, X-tar, X-Nextmail with reponse HTTP-Version: 1.0 Response: OK MIME-Content-type: image/GIF Allow: GET, PUT, TEXTSEARCH Public: GET, TEXTSEARCH etc etc. The spec hasn't been completely extended to contain all the authorization features yet, but comments on the general direction are welcoime at this stage. Tim