Subject: Is there any ongoing work on HTTP?

From: "Sylvain Hellegouarch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 20:28:45 +0100 (BST)

Hello everyone,

I had first sent that to [email-masked] but Mark Nottingham kindly
advised me to come up here instead (sorry for those registered to both
lists).

The W3 protocols page states:

"""Now that both HTTP extensions and HTTP/1.1 are stable  specifications,
W3C has closed the HTTP Activity. The Activity has achieved its  goals of
creating a successful standard that addresses the weaknesses of  earlier
HTTP versions."""

My question is then simple? Is there any plan to update HTTP after  almost
6 years its last specification has been issued?

As naive as it may sound, the last few years have shown that HTTP  was not
alsways either understood or clear enough on some topics. To name a  few:

* The lack of clear separation between an HTTP status code and the  header
sent along the response
* The endless issue about the idempotency or not of HTTP methods
* The real usability of pipelinig (today's networks are not onmes  of 10
years ago)
* The usability of 100-Continue
* Is the Accept header efficient

I believe there are more issues of course.

Now some might say these are minor problems and do not require a  new WG
process and this is certainly true (I'm a simple hacker with little
knowledge of how the W3 internally works). However I felt intrigued to
know if there were even "corridor discussions" on that matter :)

Intrigued because HTTP has been becoming more and more heavily used
(internet connections are getting cheaper, globalization of  companies with
offices all around the World, the recent success of REST and  technologies
such as Ajax) and it sounds like a good time to me clarify blurry  topics.

Anyway, just to know if there was any life around HTTP these days.

Regards,
- Sylvain
http://www.defuze.org