Re: LYNX-DEV Accept-Encoding: gzip, compress

[Foteos Macrides]

Hynek Med <address@hidden> wrote:
>If I understand it right, lynx can negotiate sending compressed data with
>the http server. Does anybody know of a server which supports this, so I
>can try it? 

        The conneg draft is still just a draft being regularly revised,
not an RFC.  Lynx does not support negotiation in the full sense of the
most current draft.   For Content-Type negotiation, Lynx indicates its
preferences based on the presentation mappings, and will render and
display the body of a 300 reply status if none of the preferences can
be met by the server.  That body should include descriptions and links
for what is available from the server.

        For Content-Encoding, Lynx simply indicates a preference for
a gzipped or Unix compressed transmission if available.  I would guess
the Apache server supports this type of negotiation, but I don't know
a URL for one which uses it according to the conneg draft.  Many
servers are set up to handle files with names of the form foo.blah.gz
by sending a Content-Encoding with value x-gzip, and a Content-Type
based on the server's mapping for ".blah", but that's not true
negotiation, i.e, it will occur regardless of whether the browser sent
an Accept-Encoding header.

        Klaus has been active in the development of the conneg draft,
and I'm sure could implement true negotiation when the time is right
for doing it fully.

                                Fote

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 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 address@hidden         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
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