Subject: on/about a stream, frame ordering

From: William Chan (陈智昌) <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:41:45 -0700

I feel like we've discussed this in the interim meetings, but I don't see
any language about this in the spec. I see many references to "on a
stream", but I can't find anything "about a stream". Is this language we
plan to formalize in the spec?

Also, we've discussed what frames are allowed to be reordered by
intermediaries, based on whether they are on/about a stream. I don't think
I've seen anything about this in the spec. Do we have plans to discuss this
in the spec?

Cheers.

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From: Martin Thomson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:54:28 -0700

On 21 October 2013 11:41, William Chan (陈智昌) <[email-masked]> wrote:
> any language about this in the spec. I see many references to "on a stream",
> but I can't find anything "about a stream". Is this language we plan to
> formalize in the spec?

I don't know if we ever formally discussed this, but there were a
number of offline discussions.  I concluded (with Jeff's help) that -
at least for specification text - there was no strong need to invent a
nomenclature around this.  What the draft does is define a stream in
terms of HEADERS and DATA frames:

"A "stream" is an independent, bi-directional sequence of HEADERS and
DATA frames exchanged between the client and server within an HTTP/2.0
connection."

On the whole, the draft is explicit about the use of each individual
frame type (when, where, how, etc...), which avoids the need for a
label like that.  Yes, that approach doesn't scale, but the hope is
that there isn't any need to scale to any real extent.

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From: Martin Thomson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:55:32 -0700

Oh, forgot one thing:

There is no harm in us using "on" and "about" when talking about these
things as a bit of a shorthand, as long as it doesn't become
exclusionary in any way.