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Date:      Tue, 2 Apr 2002 15:19:42 -0800 (PST)
From:      Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>
To:        Scott Maier <scott@omnigroup.com>
Cc:        www@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Who is Responsible for What
Message-ID:  <20020402150733.U80896-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu>
In-Reply-To: <C79AF970-468B-11D6-B810-00050209C5D2@omnigroup.com>

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On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Scott Maier wrote:

> I would seem that your web server is sometimes sending gzipped files to
> web clients, even when the client hasn't claimed to be able to
> receive/display that type of content.

I think there is a problem with how you're interpreting the
specifications.  HTTP/1.0 requires clients to know how to deal with x-gzip
and x-compress Content-Encodings. See section 3.5 of RFC1945.

The HTTP/1.1 specification additionally states:

      Note: If the request does not include an Accept-Encoding field,
      and if the "identity" content-coding is unavailable, then
      content-codings commonly understood by HTTP/1.0 clients (i.e.,
      "gzip" and "compress") are preferred; some older clients
      improperly display messages sent with other content-codings.  The
      server might also make this decision based on information about
      the particular user-agent or client.

It should also be noted that you're making a HTTP/1.0 request, which
provides no mechanism for explicitly denying a particular
Content-Encoding.  OmniWeb either support gzip encoding or use HTTP/1.1
and Accept-Encoding: to NOT ask for it.

If you want, we can put an override in the Apache configuration to disable
it, but a) every Apache installation in the world would have to do that,
and b) there's no reason why OmniWeb can't support compressed encodings. I
_know_ there is a zlib framework in OS X. :)

Feel free to correct me on this, this is from a 5 minute reading of the
various specifications.

Doug White                    |  FreeBSD: The Power to Serve
dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu     |  www.FreeBSD.org

PS: I'm a big OmniWeb fan, don't get me wrong. :-)

PPS: OmniWeb 4.1b1 handles that page fine.




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