#PR 3760 - still some question... (fwd)

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

not ack'd.  Maybe one of you protocol cops wants to weigh in on this. 

Dean

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 19:47:53 +0200
From: Rainer Scherg <Ra...@rexroth.de>
To: dgaudet@apache.org, rainer.scherg@t-online.de
Subject: #PR 3760 - still some question...

Hi!

Sorry to bother you so late and in any way on your answer on my bug
report (Tnx for your answer, but I'didn't get an auto-answer).
But I've still some doubts on this matter and your answer...

IMO you are right this might be a violation of protokoll to set an
"override" directive. But lacking this feature would mean not to use
a great feature of apache, but to switch to a cgi solution (Yek!).

Please take a minute to catch up my opinion...



German WWW-Browsers have the follwoing default setting:
 > HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE = de                  (Netscape)
 Our users in Sweden are preset with "sv; q=...".  (MS-IE)
 A Wildcard is IMO missing...

This means that we would have to provide our mulitlingual apache
server completely in several languages (en, de, fr, ...) to prevent this
"error message".

If course our collegues in e.g. Sweden are not very pleased to see just
"<Not Acceptable>" and select an other language on each frame...
Anotherway
is to do a configuration of nearly all intranet pcs (browser config...)
- Yek
6000 PCs....

It may be a bad implementation of the protocol in either NS and IE,
but you have also the browser "http-protocol downgrade" option for
brainded browser progs in the config...

IMO it makes sense to provide an override feature (what would go wrong?)
Some short thoughts to this matter are apreciated...


cu Rainer



---------------- snap of Bug-DB --------
Full text of PR number 3760:

Received: (qmail 20931 invoked by uid 2012); 25 Jan 1999 13:49:04 -0000
Message-Id: <19...@hyperreal.org>
Date: 25 Jan 1999 13:49:04 -0000
From: Rainer Scherg <Ra...@rexroth.de>
Reply-To: Rainer.Scherg@rexroth.de
To: apbugs@hyperreal.org
Subject: MultiViews brings "Not Acceptable"
X-Send-Pr-Version: 3.2

>Number:         3760
>Category:       mod_negotiation
>Synopsis:       MultiViews brings "Not Acceptable"
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          closed
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Jan 25 05:50:00 PST 1999
>Last-Modified:  Tue Apr 20 20:45:45 PDT 1999
>Originator:     Rainer.Scherg@rexroth.de
>Organization:
>Release:        1.3.4
>Environment:
Solrais 2.6, gcc 2.?
>Description:
1. MultiViews is a great feature of apache!
2. but there is a small problem..

The problem in short description:

 - server has multiviews switched on (an it's working fine)
 - a directory has e.g. two files:
        doc.htm.de
        doc.htm.en

 - Server config is set as follows:
    AddLanguage de .de
    AddLanguage en .en
    ... etc.            
    LanguagePriority de en fr se 


- requesting "doc.htm" returns:
>How-To-Repeat:
Replace Accept-Language in Browser by one rarely used language...

>Fix:

>Audit-Trail:
State-Changed-From-To: open-closed
State-Changed-By: dgaudet
State-Changed-When: Tue Apr 20 20:45:45 PDT 1999
State-Changed-Why:
That's how the HTTP protocol works.  See RFC2068 for a description
of Accept-Language.  Essentially, the user specifying
"Accept-Language: af" says they only read af.  If they
had said "Accept-Language: af, *" then it would mean they
read and prefer af, but will take anything in a pinch.

We can't provide an option to override this -- that would
violate the protocol.

Dean
>Unformatted:
>>Not Acceptable
>>An appropriate representation of the requested resource doc.htm could not be found on this server.
>>Available variants: 
>>     doc.htm.de , type text/html, language de 
>>     doc.htm.en , type text/html, language en 

Important:
 This Message will only be returned, if the Accept-Language-Header
 sent by the browser doesn't contain any known Add-Type language
 There is no Accept-Lang-Header info apache returns the docs acording to
 the LangPriotity.

 e.g. Accept: en,de       ==> works fine returns "en"
      Accept: <empty>     ==> according LangPriority
      Accept: "af"        ==> Yek! Not Acceptable Error

If this ("Not Acceptable") is a feature, there should be a switch, to
prefere LanguagePriority in any case - instead of sending a "Not
Acceptable".

-- cu Rainer