Re: Byte ranges -- formal spec proposal

John Franks (john@math.nwu.edu)
Wed, 17 May 1995 22:25:07 +0500

According to Daniel W. Connolly:
>
> A nice, clear, complete proposal. As you say, this could be done as a
> server-private mechanism, but there's no reason why everybody
> shouldn't do it the same way.
>
> A couple nits:
>
> > * The first byte in file is byte number 1.
>
> Blech. I'd rather it were 0. No biggie.
>

Base 0 is fine for bytes but would be problematic for other ranges.
E.g.

http://host/book;chapterrange=3-5

would mean chapters 4 to 6 if base 0 is used. This would be just too
confusing. We thought it better to be consistent and use the same
base for everything.

> > MULTIPLE URL PARAMETERS
> >
> > If at some point there will be multiple simultaneous URL parameters,
> > they should be separated by the ampersand character (just like
> > multiple values are encoded in the FORM request).
>
> The ampersand character has odd interactions with SGML entity
> reference syntax in HTML.
>
> This URL:
>
> http://host/path;param1=val1&param2=val2
>
> has to be written:
>
> <a href="http://host/path;param1=val1&#38;param2=val2">xxx</a>
> <a href="http://host/path;param1=val1&amp;param2=val2">xxx</a>
>
> in HTML.
>
> I suggest you separate parameters with ';' in stead:
>
> <a href="http://host/path;param1=val1;param2=val2">xxx</a>
>
> Save everybody a little grief.
>

This is a good point.

John Franks