Fwd: draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-rev-04 comments

Jim Gettys (jg@pa.dec.com)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 10:38:23 -0700 

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Jeff just couldn't keep his mouth shut until after I'd shipped a draft.

Maybe some day he'll get the hint...
			- Jim


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To: jg@pa.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
Subject: Re: draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-rev-04 comments 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 11 Sep 98 06:42:35 PDT."             <9809111342.AA27363@pachyderm.pa.dec.com> 
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 98 10:09:37 MDT
From: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul>
Status:   

Yes, I know it's probably too late (don't you wish you had never
heard of Word?), but in this

    Inbound and outbound refer to the request path where the origin server 
    is always the most inbound server and the client is always the most 
    outbound.

the grammatically correct interpretation (filling in the ellipsis)
is
    Inbound and outbound refer to the request path where the origin server 
    is always the most inbound server and the client is always the most 
    outbound [server].

The problem is compounded by the fact that a proxy can be a "client"
in HTTP-speak:

    client
      A program that establishes connections for the purpose of sending
      requests.

and what you really meant was probably something more like    

    Inbound and outbound refer to the request path, where the origin
    server is always the most inbound server, and the user agent is
    always the most outbound client.

I've always tried to say "end-client" instead of "user agent", since
the latter instantly puts most people in the wrong state of mind.
But the definition of "user agent" in the terminology section covers
end clients without an actual "user", so I guess this will do.

How about fixing this in the document source before you forget :-)

-Jeff

P.S.: Although a more declarative form of definition would be

    Inbound and outbound refer to the request and response paths for
    messages: "inbound" means "travelling toward the origin server",
    and "outbound" means "travelling toward the user agent."
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