Re: Byte ranges -- formal spec proposal

Gavin Nicol (gtn@ebt.com)
Thu, 18 May 1995 14:07:24 +0500


I do not like the idea of byte ranges being part of a URL.
In DynaWeb for example

http://www.ebt.com/collection/readers?byterange=1-500

is absolutely meaningless, because the actual file size is not
related to the size of the documents retrieved. Worse even,
there are cases (and DynaWeb is one) where a single URL
can possibly reference documents that differ in an
arbitrary manner.

In other words, byte ranges are not generally applicable to
all objects accessible via a URL, so we cannot make this
a requirement.

How about adding another method instead?