Initializing HTTP headers from HTML documents

Dave_Raggett (dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com)
Wed, 5 Jan 94 17:00:28 GMT

I would like to propose a scheme that HTTP servers can use to
initialize HTTP headers by reading information held at the start of
HTML/HTML+ documents. This is intended for fields like Expires: which
are best determined by the document author.

The generic META element takes the following attributes:

NAME the name of an HTTP header such as Expires
VALUE the value to be passed with the associated header

e.g. <META NAME="Expires" VALUE="Tue, 04 Jan 1994 14:13:25 GMT">

This element is only permitted as part of the document's HEAD
along with TITLE, ISINDEX and LINK.

Any comments?

Dave Raggett