Subject: Re: Defining extensions for the "Expect" header

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:58:02 +0100

Jeffrey Mogul wrote:
> ...
> Note that RFC2817, which defined the status code registry,
> was titled "Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1".  I think it
> is generally a mistake to define a generic registry within
> the specification of a specific protocol ... maybe someone
> thought it would be easier to get one RFC blessed than two,
> but if the IESG doesn't like the specific protocol, then
> the registry definition could be held hostage until they are
> happy about the protocol.
> ...

Jeffrey, thanks for the feedback.

RFC2817 is really interesting, it states:

"7.1 HTTP Status Code Registry

    The HTTP Status Code Registry defines the name space for the Status-
    Code token in the Status line of an HTTP response.  The initial
    values for this name space are those specified by:

    1.  Draft Standard for HTTP/1.1 [1]
    2.  Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning [4] [defines 420-424]
    3.  WebDAV Advanced Collections [5] (Work in Progress) [defines 425]
    4.  Section 6 [defines 426]

    Values to be added to this name space SHOULD be subject to review in
    the form of a standards track document within the IETF Applications
    Area.  Any such document SHOULD be traceable through statuses of
    either 'Obsoletes' or 'Updates' to the Draft Standard for
    HTTP/1.1 [1]."

Note,

- RFC2518 [4] defined 422-424 and 507, but not 420 and 421 (and was 
published before RFC2817) 
(<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2518.html#status.code.extensions.to.http11>)

- The only document that actually *does* update RFC2616 is RFC2817 :-)

The WebDAV WG is indeed working on a document that defines new status 
codes 
(<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-webdav-bind-10.html#additional.status.codes>): 
should it indeed say that it updates RFC2616?

Speaking of which: is there a registry for HTTP method names (almost all 
  specs produced by the WebDAV WG define new method names...)?

Best regards, Julian

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