Re: uh oh -- halp!

William M. Perry (wmperry@mango.ucs.indiana.edu)
Wed, 08 Sep 1993 16:11:33 -0500

Thus wrote:
>
>> I have an option. Don't mess with the CR LF stuff, just add a way
>> to indentify the protocol. If HTTP servers identified themselves at
>> startup by saying "welcome: HTTP/1.0", or something like that, then we
>> would know exactly what to send and expect. This would solve alot
>> of current problems and some BIG future problems as well.
>>
>> :lou
>
>But won't this require 2 round trips for every document. First ask
>the server its HTTP version, then send the request. Massive slowdown
>it seems to me.

Actually, no. When you make the connection to the server, it
automatically spits it out as a 'hello' message. Just have the
browsers wait for one line of output, then parse it to see if it
accepts http/1.0 requests, then send the appropriate request. It
might mean a slight slowdown for sites halfway around the globe, but
then the connection won't be blazingly fast anyway. :)

I had always wondered why this wasn't in the HTTP spec, since most
of the other protocols seem to use it (SMTP, NNTP, POP, etc).

The only problem would be re-releasing new versions of the clients,
but thats no big deal. It would be critical to time the release of
new clients with the installation of the new servers, or else things
like GIFS and compressed images would be totally screwed.

-Bill P.