Re: Byte ranges -- formal spec proposal

According to Daniel W. Connolly:
> 
> A nice, clear, complete proposal. As you say, this could be done as a
> server-private mechanism, but there's no reason why everybody
> shouldn't do it the same way.
> 
> A couple nits:
> 
> >     * The first byte in file is byte number 1.
> 
> Blech. I'd rather it were 0. No biggie.
> 

Base 0 is fine for bytes but would be problematic for other ranges.
E.g. 

	http://host/book;chapterrange=3-5

would mean chapters 4 to 6 if base 0 is used.  This would be just too
confusing.  We thought it better to be consistent and use the same
base for everything.

> >  MULTIPLE URL PARAMETERS
> >  
> >   If at some point there will be multiple simultaneous URL parameters,
> >   they should be separated by the ampersand character (just like
> >   multiple values are encoded in the FORM request).
> 
> The ampersand character has odd interactions with SGML entity
> reference syntax in HTML.
> 
> This URL:
> 
> 	http://host/path;param1=val1&param2=val2
> 
> has to be written:
> 
> 	<a href="http://host/path;param1=val1&#38;param2=val2">xxx</a>
> 	<a href="http://host/path;param1=val1&amp;param2=val2">xxx</a>
> 
> in HTML.
> 
> I suggest you separate parameters with ';' in stead:
> 
> 	<a href="http://host/path;param1=val1;param2=val2">xxx</a>
> 
> Save everybody a little grief.
> 

This is a good point.

John Franks

Received on Wednesday, 17 May 1995 20:15:08 UTC