Re: Compression via content negotiation

["Roy T. Fielding" <fi...@kiwi.ics.uci.edu>]

>Yes. The issues is people who have index.html and index.html.gz. At the
>moment a request for index.html will always select index.html, without
>negotiating between index.html and index.html.gz.

Yep, and that part isn't going to change.  There must always be a
distinction within our httpd namespace between URLs that are negotiation
handles and those that are not.  Failure to maintain this distinction
completely screws over both caching and authoring of resource
representations.

....Roy

Re: Compression via content negotiation

[Dean Gaudet <dg...@arctic.org>]

On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Paul Ausbeck wrote:

> I think that some focus
> should be put on the sweetspot of enabling transparent html compression.

It's *transparent* stuff that has the most pitfalls.

Have you tested the browsers through proxies?  Anything bad happen when
you go back through the same proxy with an older browser? 

> Problems with secondary issues can most likely be handled by thoughtful
> site administration.

That's a funny one. 

Dean

Re: Compression via content negotiation

[Paul Ausbeck <pa...@alumni.cse.ucsc.edu>]

Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> 
> >Yes. The issues is people who have index.html and index.html.gz. At the
> >moment a request for index.html will always select index.html, without
> >negotiating between index.html and index.html.gz.
> 
> Yep, and that part isn't going to change.  There must always be a
> distinction within our httpd namespace between URLs that are negotiation
> handles and those that are not.  Failure to maintain this distinction
> completely screws over both caching and authoring of resource
> representations.
> 
> ....Roy

I'm not so sure that's a good idea. RIGHT NOW a site using MS's server
can be configured to transparently encode html files. Static, dynamic,
and lazy compression can all be configured. Current versions of both IE
and Navigator work correctly with MS's server. Compression can be
applied even to urls that explicitly exist, not just negotiation
handles.

There are all sorts of potential pitfalls with compression. I don't
think that one should lose sight of the fact that it would be nice if
internet bandwidth were effectively doubled. I think that some focus
should be put on the sweetspot of enabling transparent html compression.
Problems with secondary issues can most likely be handled by thoughtful
site administration.

Paul Ausbeck