Re: Byte ranges -- formal spec proposal

Per various requests, I'm sending this to www-talk only so people will not
see it multiple times.

My main question is what exactly a byte range is intended to mean.  For
example, if I'm a client and I have a fresh cached version of <http://foo>,
what should I display when dereferencing <http://foo;byterange=100-200>?
A representation of just that range, using the same content-type as the main
part?  The whole cached version of <http://foo> with the window aligned to
that portion of the document and everything else greyed out, but still
readable for context?

In essence, is the purpose of this merely to decrease network bandwidth
by allowing servers to send only part of a representation, or to provide
a mechanism for making an HTTP URL go to specific portions of an object?
Any more elaborate comments on the proposal would need to first be
grounded in which of these two objectives we're trying to attain.

(Aside -- apart from text/plain, how many widely used content-types
are there where a fragment of the object is a legal object of that
content-type?)

- Marc

Received on Thursday, 18 May 1995 11:51:56 UTC