On Fri, 27 Sep 1996, Eric Miller wrote:
> [log in to unmask] writes:
> > For this reason, I think it important that each META element be entirely
> > self-sufficient, and not rely on others in a sequence being in the right
> > order.
>
> I absolutely agree with this... HTTP HEAD requests for example do
> *not* necessarily guarantee the order of the items that are sent.
> Robots, etc. that (will) rely on this information will have to be able
> to handle this in a logical manner...
This is getting a bit tangential from the topic of embedding metadata in
HTML documents. The HTTP HEAD request doesn't return what's in the HEAD
of the HTML document. As HTTP and HTML are two complete different but
intertwined things, its not too surprising that RFC1945 doesn't even
mention HTML's META elements:
8.2 HEAD
The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server must not
return any Entity-Body in the response. The metainformation contained
in the HTTP headers in response to a HEAD request should be identical
to the information sent in response to a GET request. This method can
be used for obtaining metainformation about the resource identified
by the Request-URI without transferring the Entity-Body itself. This
method is often used for testing hypertext links for validity,
accessibility, and recent modification.
There is no "conditional HEAD" request analogous to the conditional
GET. If an If-Modified-Since header field is included with a HEAD
request, it should be ignored.
So its basically up to the server what it returns from a HEAD request and
isn't really related to the format or ordering of the META elements in the
HTML HEAD. If the metadata is to be put in the response to a HEAD request
it won't be in the HTML format anyway so one can assume that we can leave
it to the server to put the packages into sensible attribute-value pairs.
If it really comes to the crunch we can _define_ that servers put the our
package style metadata out in the order its present in the HTML document.
Seeing as the servers don't currently do anything with the style of META
element's that we're proposing I'd say that's fair game.
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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