Subject: user agent header question

From: "Denis A. Doroshenko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:11:51 +0200

hello,
i have one simple question: why user-agent header isn't standardized to
return much more useful information that it does today? it says completely
nothing about what is supported at client side, and we see so many
javascripts on the net, that perform sily detection of browser and
guess what that browser can. it would be much more useable to have
standardized header (why not User-Agent?) in a form like:

User-Agent: <user_agent_description> <header_separator> <supported_features_list>

where (mix of regex and C style declarations)

<user_agent_description>  -- <any_char> *
<header_separator>        -- "::"
<supported_features_list> -- <feature> [<feature_separator> <feature> \
                             [<feature_separator> <feature> [...]]]

<feature>                 -- <feature_name>[<info_separator> <additional_info>]
<feature_name>            -- <char> +
<info_separator>          -- '/'
<additional_info>         -- <char> +
<feature_separator>       -- ','

<any_char>                -- ' ' .. '\x7f'
<char>                    -- '!' .. '\x7f' # no space

that would return for example

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (X11; U; OpenBSD 2.6 i386; Nav) :: HTML/4.0,JavaScript/1.2,Java/1.2.2,Frames,DHTML,Stylesheets

(well, don't really pay attention to the numbers and items :-) instead of:

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (X11; U; OpenBSD 2.6 i386; Nav)

the reason is: the first header says me everything about what the
browser supports, and the second gives nothing. it also seems
reasonable to me to add this information to User-Agent header,
becasue it lists features of the borwser. however, it would
be anything bad if it would be User-Agent-Supports or something
like that.

Thank you in advance!..
-- 
Denis A. Doroshenko
Omnitel Ltd., Sevcenkos 25, Vilnius 2600, Lithuania
mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: "Larry Rufo" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:37:38 -0500

Hello!

I apologize for my rude behavior, in advance.  Mailing lists frequently have
tags, at the bottom with list information (i.e.: subscribe/unsubscribe,
archive info, etc.).  However, this list does not follow that convention.

I don't have the original email, which probably contained the info about
unsubscribing.  I attempted to unsubscribe with this:
[email-masked]

Obviously that attempt failed, so I am posting to this list for help.
Please, provide information about unsubscribing to this list.

Thank you,
Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: Denis A. Doroshenko [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 2:12 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: user agent header question

hello,

User-Agent: <user_agent_description> <header_separator>
<supported_features_list>

<feature>                 -- <feature_name>[<info_separator>
<additional_info>]
<feature_name>            -- <char> +
<info_separator>          -- '/'
<additional_info>         -- <char> +
<feature_separator>       -- ','

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (X11; U; OpenBSD 2.6 i386; Nav) ::
HTML/4.0,JavaScript/1.2,Java/1.2.2,Frames,DHTML,Stylesheets

Thank you in advance!..