Re: Netscape 4.5 and HTTP/1.1 Accept-Encoding
Jim Gettys (jg@pa.dec.com)
Tue, 3 Nov 1998 13:19:46 -0800
See section 3.5; I believe it is clear on the topic.
The tokens refer to algorithms; not programs.
gzip An encoding format produced by the file compression program ``gzip''
(GNU zip) as described in RFC 1952 [25]. This format is a Lempel-Ziv coding
(LZ77) with a 32 bit CRC.
compress The encoding format produced by the common UNIX file compression
program ``compress''. This format is an adaptive Lempel-Ziv-Welch coding
(LZW).
Use of program names for the identification of encoding formats is not
desirable and is discouraged for future encodings. Their use here is
representative of historical practice, not good design. For compatibility
with previous implementations of HTTP, applications SHOULD consider ``x-gzip''
and ``x-compress'' to be equivalent to ``gzip'' and ``compress'' respectively.
That a particular implementation chooses to use a gzip program that happens
to also handle compress is an implementation issue; it should declare
what algorithms it actually implements.
Note the historical note. We been here before, and done this folks.
- Jim