[10502] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: HTTP response version, again
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Laurie)
Sun Dec 22 04:31:00 1996
To: Alexei Kosut <akosut@nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us>
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 08:12:18 +0000 (GMT)
From: Ben Laurie <ben@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk>
Cc: ben@algroup.co.uk, dwm@xpasc.com, S.N.Brodie@ecs.soton.ac.uk,
brian@organic.com, hedlund@best.com, dmk@research.bell-labs.com,
www-talk@www10.w3.org, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.HPP.3.95.961221110342.28983B-100000@ace.nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us> from "Alexei Kosut" at Dec 21, 96 11:04:35 am
Reply-To: ben@algroup.co.uk
Alexei Kosut wrote:
>
> On Sat, 21 Dec 1996, Ben Laurie wrote:
>
> > It also seems to me that the spec is not clear on this issue. There is clear
> > intent in HTTP/1.1, in that the word "major" was added to the version of
> > the response, but, AFAICS, no clear requirement to respond either 1.0 or 1.1 to
> > a 1.0 request. Since a requirement of the spec is to be liberal in what is
> > accepted, it seems to me that the correct interpretation of the spec is that
> > a 1.1 reponse to a 1.0 request is permitted.
> >
> > I forget where we are wrt modifications to the spec. It seems to me that a
> > modification should be made to clarify this point, whichever way it goes.
>
> IMHO, I don't think it's particuarly neccessary for the spec to
> specify how a HTTP/1.1 server has to respond to HTTP/1.0 requests. As
> was pointed out, even if the spec did say that it had to respond with
> HTTP/1.1, that doesn't mean anything, because in fact when a HTTP/1.0
> request came in, the server could just use HTTP/1.0 semantics and
> would be perfectly within its rights to respond with HTTP/1.0. I don't
> think it's neccessary to specific one over the other - both can
> coexist perfectly well. (that being said, I do favor responding to
> HTTP/1.0 with HTTP/1.1).
>
> However, it seems certainly desirable to add some language to the spec
> along the lines of "if a message of a version with a known major
> number, but an unknown minor number is received (e.g., if a HTTP/1.0
> client recieves a HTTP/1.1 response, or a HTTP/1.2 server receives a
> HTTP/1.7 request), it should be treated as if it was a request
> equivilent to the highest minor number in that major version that is
> supported."
Agreed. Except we should spell equivalent correctly ;-)
Cheers,
Ben.
--
Ben Laurie Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435 Email: ben@algroup.co.uk
Freelance Consultant and Fax: +44 (181) 994 6472
Technical Director URL: http://www.algroup.co.uk/Apache-SSL
A.L. Digital Ltd, Apache Group member (http://www.apache.org)
London, England. Apache-SSL author
