Re: Redirection: "Location" or "Uri" ?

Tony Sanders <sanders@BSDI.COM>
Message-id: <199401141639.KAA07042@austin.BSDI.COM>
To: www-talk@www0.cern.ch
Subject: Re: Redirection: "Location" or "Uri" ? 
In-Reply-To: Rob McCool's message of Fri, 14 Jan 1994 05:04:15 CST.
Organization: Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 10:39:37 -0600
From: Tony Sanders <sanders@BSDI.COM>
Content-Length: 1475
There are quite a few changes in the HTTP spec.  Time for a re-read!

>  * 	Location: <url>
[changed to the following by TimBL a few months ago]
>  * 	Uri: <url> String CrLf

What needs to happen is all clients should be changed to support both.
When that happens we should start converting servers to send URI: instead
of Location:.  Clients will probably need to support Location: for a long
time, but it's cost is very low (it's really just a special case of URI:).

HTTP SPEC CHANGE REQUEST:
    The HTTP spec should be changed to mention Location: as the depreciated
    URI: specifier without the vary parameter.

    Also "Content-Language:" gives examples "Language: En_US".  So is it
    Content-Language or just Language.  If it's Content-Language: then
    it should be Content-Version:.  I vote for using a Content- prefix
    to reduce namespace conflicts (you still have a few, Content-Length
    for example).


URI: was chosen for a generic object location identifier and it includes
the "vary" parameter which allows you to specify things about the object.
For example, you can point to an *exact* object, or an object in which
the "version" varies, or an object in which the "language" varies,
or an object in which the "content-type" may vary.

There are headers to go along with each of the dimension of variability
(namely Language:, Version:, and Content-Type:).  Version: isn't fully
spec'ed out yet.  Of course, this is an extensible list.

--sanders