[11544] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: etag or itag?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Koen Holtman)
Mon Mar 20 04:51:46 2000
From: koen@win.tue.nl (Koen Holtman)
Message-Id: <200003200946.KAA00488@wsooti41.win.tue.nl>
In-Reply-To: <200003181446.JAA14528@lycanthrope.crosslink.net> from "danielh@crosslink.net" at "Mar 18, 2000 9:48: 7 am"
To: danielh@crosslink.net
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 10:46:49 +0100 (MET)
Cc: www-talk@w3.org
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>Whilst reviewing the rfc for delta encoding, I realized that
>my understanding of "etag" may be incorrect.
The main reference on etags in HTTP is of rfc2616.
[...]
>I now wonder if this is incorect.
> Instead, should the etag be associated with the underlying
> "instance"?
>That is, with the contents of a response BEFORE any content
>codings, OR range selection, have been applied.
[...]
HTTP/1.1 allows gzipping (or any other encoding) at two levels:
content coding and transfer coding. A different transfer coding or
range selection does _not_ affect the etag. If the content coding is
different however, the etag must also be different.
This is the way I recall things at least, I don't know if rfc2616 says
all this that clearly.
Koen.
