HTTP Working Group Koen Holtman, TUE Internet-Draft Andrew Mutz, Hewlett-Packard Expires: May 21, 1997 November 21, 1996 Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP draft-holtman-http-negotiation-04.txt STATUS OF THIS MEMO This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress". To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to the HTTP working group at . Discussions of the working group are archived at . General discussions about HTTP and the applications which use HTTP should take place on the mailing list. A HTML version of this document, and versions with change bars, are available at . ABSTRACT HTTP allows one to put multiple versions of the same information under a single URL. Transparent content negotiation is a mechanism, layered on top of HTTP, for automatically selecting the best version when the URL is accessed. This enables the smooth deployment of new web data formats and markup tags. Design goals for transparent content negotiation include: low overhead on the request message size, downwards compatibility, extensibility, enabling the rapid introduction of new areas of negotiation, scalability, low cost for minimal support, end user control, and good cacheability. TABLE OF CONTENTS Note: the section numbering is this document is sometimes irregular because it tries to preserve the numbering in the 02 version as much as possible. 1 Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 Note for readers 1.3 Revision History 2 Terminology 2.1 Terms from HTTP/1.1 2.2 New terms 3 Notation 4 Overview 4.1 Content negotiation 4.2 HTTP/1.0 style negotiation scheme 4.3 Transparent content negotiation scheme 4.4 Optimizing the negotiation process 4.4B Downwards compatibility with non-negotiating user agents 4.5 Retrieving a variant by hand 4.6 Dimensions of negotiation 4.7 Feature negotiation 5 Variant descriptions 5.1 Syntax 5.2 URI 5.3 Source-quality 5.4 Type, language, length, and charset. 5.5 Features 5.6 Description 5.7 Extension-attribute 6 Feature negotiation 6.1 Feature tags 6.2 Accept-Features header 6.3 Feature predicates 6.4 Features attribute 7 Feature negotiation examples 7.1 Use of feature tags 7.2 Use of numeric feature tags 8 Feature tag registration 8.1 Evolution of feature tags 8.2 Core set of feature tags 8.3 Feature tag design 9 Content negotiation response codes and headers 9.1 506 Variant Also Negotiates 9.2 Accept-Features 9.3 Content-Features 9.4 Alternates 9.6 Negotiate 9.7 Variant-Vary 9B Cache validators 9B.1 Variant list validators 9B.2 Structured entity tags 9B.3 Assigning entity tags to variants 10 Content negotiation responses 10.1 List response 10.2 Choice response 10.2B Ad hoc response 10.3 Reusing the Alternates header 10.4 Extracting a normal response from a choice response 10.5 Elaborate Vary headers 10.5.1 Construction of an elaborate Vary header 10.5.2 Caching of an elaborate Vary header 10.6 Negotiation on content encoding 11 The network negotiation algorithm 11.1 Input 11.2 Output 11.2.1 Output for proxies 11.2.2 Output for origin servers 11.2.3 Output for user agents 11.3 Computing the overall quality values 11.4 Definite and speculative quality values 11.5 Determining the result 11.5.1 Result for proxies and origin servers 11.5.2 Result for user agents 11.6 Construction of short requests 12 User agent support for transparent negotiation 12.1 Handling of responses 12.2 Presentation of a transparently negotiated resource 13 Origin server support for transparent negotiation 13.1 Requirements 13.2 Negotiation on transactions other than GET and HEAD 14 Proxy support for transparent negotiation 15 Security and privacy considerations 15.1 Accept headers revealing information of a private nature 15.2 Spoofing of responses from variant resources 16 Acknowledgments 17 References 18 Authors' addresses 19 Appendices 19.1 Adding an Expires header to ensure HTTP/1.0 compatibility 19.2 Origin server implementation considerations 19.2.1 Implementation with a CGI script 19.2.2 Direct support by HTTP servers 19.2.3 Web publishing tools 19.3 Open issues in transparent content negotiation 19.3B Server-side rendering engines 19.3C Quality factors in the Accept-Features header 19.4 Other negotiation specifications 19.4.1 User-Agent Display Attributes 19.4.2 HTTP/1.2 Extension Protocol (PEP) 19.5 Related issues 19.5.1 Current negotiation practice 19.5.2 Bandwidth negotiation 1 Introduction HTTP allows one to put multiple versions of the same information under a single URI. Each of these versions is called a `variant'. Transparent content negotiation is a mechanism for automatically and efficiently retrieving the best variant when a GET or HEAD request is made. This enables the smooth deployment of new web data formats and markup tags. This specification defines transparent content negotiation as an extension on top of the HTTP/1.1 protocol [1]. However, use of this extension does not require use of HTTP/1.1: transparent content negotiation can also be done if some or all of the parties are HTTP/1.0 [3] systems. Transparent negotiation is called `transparent' because it makes all variants inside the origin server visible to outside parties. 1.1 Background The addition of content negotiation to the web infrastructure has been considered important since the early days of the web. Among the expected benefits of a sufficiently powerful system for content negotiation are * smooth deployment of new data formats and markup tags will allow graceful evolution of the web * eliminating the need to choose between a `state of the art multimedia homepage' and one which can be viewed by all web users * enabling good service to a wider range of browsing platforms (from low-end PDA's to high-end VR setups) * eliminating error-prone and cache-unfriendly User-Agent based negotiation * enabling construction of sites without `click here for the X version' links * internationalization, and the ability to offer multi-lingual content without a bias towards one language. The development of content negotiation has been a slow process, perhaps because the expected benefits are mostly long-term benefits. Also, all immediately obvious content negotiation solutions involve sending larger HTTP request messages. Larger request messages are unacceptable to many people: a small overhead on the request size is often cited as the main technical requirement for any scheme which offers the above benefits. Therefore, a low overhead on the request message size is one of the main design goals of this specification. A large fraction of the text below is devoted to the definition of mechanisms for meeting this design goal. The desire to provide for good cacheability in all cases accounts for another considerable part of the content of this document. Other design goals include downwards compatibility, extensibility, enabling the rapid introduction of new areas of negotiation, scalability, low cost of minimal support, and end user control. End user control, the option to manually select a variant if desired, is the one redeeming quality of the `click here for the X version' type of negotiation. Preserving this option is considered important. 1.2 Note for readers Some sections in this document discuss requirements for proxy caches only. Implementers of origin servers and user agents (but not implementers of user agent caches) can skip these sections. The sections which can be skipped are: 10.3 Reusing the Alternates header 10.4 Extracting a normal response from a choice response 10.5.2 Caching of an elaborate Vary header 14 Proxy support for transparent negotiation The skipping of these sections is also recommended on first reading. 1.3 Revision History The change bars in this document reflect the changes with respect to the 03 version of this draft. Major functional changes are: - The model for the caching of variant lists has been changed extensively. (The previous version had a problem with downwards compatibility.) - The definition of the Negotiate header has been changed to include a `trans' keyword. - The form `ftag=', with N-M a range of numeric values, was added to the feature expressions and feature predicates. Major changes in the presentation are: - Feature tag registration is now covered in a separate draft - Some new explanatory material was added - Some existing text has been improved In the text version of this document with change bars, all changes are marked except changes in formatting and punctuation. In the HTML version of this document with changes marked, all changed words and symbols are typeset in bold text. Deletions and changes in punctuation are not marked in the HTML version. 2 Terminology 2.1 Terms from HTTP/1.1 This specification mostly uses the terminology of the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. The definitions below were reproduced from [1]. request An HTTP request message. response An HTTP response message. resource A network data object or service that can be identified by a URI. Resources may be available in multiple representations (e.g. multiple languages, data formats, size, resolutions) or vary in other ways. content negotiation The mechanism for selecting the appropriate representation when servicing a request. variant A resource may have one, or more than one, representation(s) associated with it at any given instant. Each of these representations is termed a `variant.' Use of the term `variant' does not necessarily imply that the resource is subject to content negotiation. client A program that establishes connections for the purpose of sending requests. user agent The client which initiates a request. These are often browsers, editors, spiders (web-traversing robots), or other end user tools. server An application program that accepts connections in order to service requests by sending back responses. Any given program may be capable of being both a client and a server; our use of these terms refers only to the role being performed by the program for a particular connection, rather than to the program's capabilities in general. Likewise, any server may act as an origin server, proxy, gateway, or tunnel, switching behavior based on the nature of each request. origin server The server on which a given resource resides or is to be created. proxy An intermediary program which acts as both a server and a client for the purpose of making requests on behalf of other clients. Requests are serviced internally or by passing them on, with possible translation, to other servers. A proxy must implement both the client and server requirements of this specification. age The age of a response is the time since it was sent by, or successfully validated with, the origin server. fresh A response is fresh if its age has not yet exceeded its freshness lifetime. 2.2 New terms transparently negotiable resource A resource, identified by a single URI, which has multiple representations (variants) associated with it. When servicing a request on its URI, it allows selection of the best representation using the transparent content negotiation mechanism. A transparently negotiable resource always has a variant list bound to it, which can be represented as an Alternates header. variant list A list containing variant descriptions, which can be bound to a transparently negotiable resource. variant description A machine-readable description of a variant resource, usually found in a variant list. A variant description contains the variant resource URI and various attributes which describe properties of the variant. Variant descriptions are defined in Section 5. variant resource A resource from which a variant of a negotiable resource can be retrieved with a simple GET request. A variant resource usually has only one representation (variant) associated with it. list response A list response contains the variant list of the negotiable resource, but no variant data. It is generated when the server does not (perhaps cannot) choose a particular best variant for the request. List responses are defined in Section 10.1. choice response A choice response contains both the variant list of the negotiable resource and a representation of the best variant for the request. Choice responses are defined in Section 10.2. ad hoc response An ad hoc response contains the variant list of the negotiable resource, and any other data the origin server wants to send. It can be generated as a response to a non-negotiating user agent if the server does not (perhaps cannot) choose any particular variant. Ad hoc responses are defined in Section 10.2B. normal response A HTTP response which is not a list response, choice response, or ad hoc response. Normal responses are never generated by transparently negotiable resources, and are always generated by variant resources. Accept headers The request headers: Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Language, and Accept-Features. network negotiation algorithm A standardized algorithm by which a party in the negotiation process can choose a best variant on behalf of another party. The algorithm computes whether the Accept headers in the request contain sufficient information to allow a choice, and if so, which variant must be chosen. The network negotiation algorithm is defined in Section 11. neighbor Two resources are called neighbors if the absolute URI of the first resource up to its last slash equals the absolute URI of the second resource up to its last slash. The neighboring relation is important because of security considerations; see Section 15.2. [##Historical note: In the context of old versions of the HTTP/1.1 specification like [2], list responses can be called `pre-emptive negotiation responses', and choice responses can be called `reactive negotiation responses'.##] [##Note: In the context of the HTTP/1.1 specification [1], both list and choice responses are the result of server-driven negotiation, though a list response is a server-driven negotiation response meant to initiate agent-driven negotiation.##] 3 Notation The notation [## ... ##] in this document encloses an editorial comment. Such a comment will be either removed or replaced by real text in the final version of this document. The version of BNF used in this document is taken from [1], and many of the nonterminals used are defined in [1]. One new BNF construct is added: 1%rule stands for one or more instances of "rule", separated by whitespace: 1%rule = rule *( 1*LWS rule ) 4 Overview This section gives an overview of transparent content negotiation. It starts with a more general discussion of negotiation as provided by HTTP. 4.1 Content negotiation HTTP/1.1 allows one to put multiple versions of the same information under a single resource URI. Each of these versions is called a `variant'. For example, a resource http://x.org/paper could bind to three different variants of a paper: 1. HTML, English 2. HTML, French 3. Postscript, English Content negotiation is the process by which the best variant is selected if the resource is accessed. The selection is done by matching the properties of the available variants to the capabilities of the user agent and the preferences of the user. It has always been possible under HTTP to have multiple representations available for one resource, and to return the most appropriate representation for each subsequent request. HTTP/1.1 is the first version of HTTP which has provisions for doing this in a cache-friendly way. These provisions include the Vary response header, entity tags, and the If-None-Match request header. 4.2 HTTP/1.0 style negotiation scheme The HTTP/1.0 protocol elements allow for a negotiation scheme as follows: Server _____ proxy _____ proxy _____ user x.org cache cache agent < ---------------------------------- | GET http://x.org/paper | Accept headers choose | ---------------------------------- > Best variant When the resource is accessed, the user agent sends (along with its request) various Accept headers which express the user agent capabilities and the user preferences. Then the origin server uses these Accept headers to choose the best variant, which is returned in the response. The biggest problem with this scheme is that it does not scale well. For all but the most minimal user agents, Accept headers expressing all capabilities and preferences would be very large, and sending them in every request would be hugely inefficient, in particular because only a small fraction of the resources on the web have multiple variants. 4.3 Transparent content negotiation scheme The transparent negotiation scheme eliminates the need to send huge Accept headers, and nevertheless allows for a selection process that always yields either the best variant, or an error message indicating that user agent is not capable of displaying any of the available variants. Under the transparent content negotiation scheme, the server sends a list with the available variants and their properties to the user agent. An example of a list with three variants is {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} The syntax and semantics of the variant descriptions in this list are covered in depth in Section 5. When the list is received, the user agent can choose the best variant and retrieve it. Graphically, the communication can be represented as follows: Server _____ proxy _____ proxy _____ user x.org cache cache agent < ---------------------------------- | GET http://x.org/paper | ----------------------------------- > [list response] return of list | choose | < ---------------------------------- | GET http://x.org/paper.html.en | ---------------------------------- > [normal response] return of html.en The first response returning the list of variants is called a `list response'. The second response is a normal HTTP response: it does not contain special content negotiation related information. Only the user agent needs to know that the second request actually retrieves a variant, for the other parties in the communication, the second transaction is indistinguishable from a normal HTTP transaction. With this scheme, information about capabilities and user preferences is only used by the user agent itself. Therefore, sending such information in large Accept headers is unnecessary. Accept headers do have a limited use in transparent content negotiation however; the sending of small Accept headers can often speed up the negotiation process. This is covered in Section 4.4. List responses are covered in depth in Section 10.1. As an example, the list response in the above picture could be: HTTP/1.1 300 Multiple Choices Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:02:21 GMT Alternates: {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} Vary: negotiate, accept, accept-language ETag: "blah;1234" Cache-control: max-age=86400 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 227

Multiple Choices:

The Alternates header in the response contains the variant list. The Vary header is included to ensure correct caching by HTTP/1.1 caches not capable of transparent content negotiation (see Section 10.5). The ETag header allows the response to be revalidated by caches, the Cache-Control header controls this revalidation. The HTML entity included in the response allows the user to select the best variant by hand if desired. 4.4 Optimizing the negotiation process The basic transparent negotiation scheme involves two HTTP transactions: one to retrieve the list, and a second one to retrieve the chosen variant. There are however several ways to `cut corners' in the data flow path of the basic scheme. First, caching proxies can cache both variant lists and complete responses. Such caching can reduce the communication overhead, as shown in the following example: Server _____ proxy _____ proxy __________ user x.org cache cache agent < -------------- | GET ../paper | has the list in cache | ------------- > [list response] list | | choose | < -------------------------- | GET ../paper.html.en | has the variant in cache | -------------------------- > [normal response] return of html.en Second, the user agent can send small Accept headers which could allow a server to determine the choice the user agent would make on receiving the list. If the Accept headers contain enough information, the origin server can send back the variant directly: Server _____ proxy _____ proxy _____ user x.org cache cache agent < ---------------------------------- | GET http://x.org/paper | small Accept headers | able to choose on behalf of user agent | ---------------------------------- > [choice response] return of html.en and list This choosing based on small accept headers can be done with the network negotiation algorithm (Section 11). This algorithm takes the variant list and the Accept headers as input. It computes whether the Accept headers contain sufficient information to choose on behalf of the user agent, and if so, which variant must be chosen. The response in the above diagram is called a choice response. It transmits both the chosen variant and the list of all variants bound to the negotiable resource. Choice responses are covered in depth in Section 10.2. For example, the choice response in the above picture could be: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:05:31 GMT Content-Type: text/html Last-Modified: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:01:14 GMT Content-Length: 5327 Cache-control: max-age=604800 Content-Location: paper.html.en Alternates: {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} Etag: "gonkyyyy;1234" Vary: negotiate, accept, accept-language Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMT A paper about .... Finally, the above two kinds of optimization can be combined; a caching proxy which has the list will sometimes be able to choose on behalf of the user agent. This could lead to the following communication pattern: Server _____ proxy _____ proxy __________ user x.org cache cache agent < --------------- | GET ../paper | small Accept | able to choose on behalf | < ---------- | GET ../paper.html.en | ---------- > [normal response] html.en | ---------------- > [choice response] html.en and list In this case the proxy cache nearest to the user agent has a cached variant list, and chooses on behalf of the user agent. Note that this cutting of corners does not only save bandwidth. It also eliminates delays due to packet round trip times, and reduces the load on the origin server. 4.4B Downwards compatibility with non-negotiating user agents To handle requests from user agents not capable of transparent content negotiation, transparent content negotiation basically reverts to a HTTP/1.0 style negotiation scheme. One optimization remaining is that proxy caches may sometimes be able to perform HTTP/1.0 style negotiation on behalf of the origin server. 4.5 Retrieving a variant by hand If a transparently negotiated resource is accessed, the user agent will always at some point receive the list of available variants. The user agent can use this list to make available a menu (in HTML or not) of all variants and their characteristics to the user. Such a menu can allow the user to randomly browse other variants, and can make it possible to manually correct any sub-optimal choice made by the automatic negotiation process. 4.6 Dimensions of negotiation Transparent content negotiation defines four dimensions of negotiation: 1. Media type (MIME type) 2. Charset 3. Language 4. Features The first three dimensions have traditionally been present in HTTP. The fourth dimension is added by this specification. Additional dimensions, beyond the four mentioned above, could be added by future specifications. Negotiation on the content encoding of a response (gzipped, compressed, etc.) is left outside of the realm of transparent negotiation. See Section 10.6 for more information. [##Note: In earlier versions of this specification, content encoding was a regular dimension in transparent content negotiation. It was removed mainly because negotiation on content encoding can be done on a hop-by-hop basis under HTTP/1.1 [1].##] 4.7 Feature negotiation Feature negotiation intends to provide for all areas of negotiation not covered by the type, charset, and language dimensions. Examples are negotiation on * HTML extensions * Extensions of other media types * Color capabilities of the user agent * Screen size * Output medium (screen, paper, ...) * Preference for speed vs. preference for graphical detail The feature negotiation framework is the principal means by which transparent negotiation offers extensibility; a new dimension of negotiation (really a sub-dimension of the feature dimension) can be added without the need for a new standards effort by the simple registration of a `feature tag'. Feature registration is discussed in Section 8. 5 Variant descriptions 5.1 Syntax A variant can be described in a machine-readable way with a variant description. variant-description = "{" <"> URI <"> source-quality *variant-attribute "}" source-quality = qvalue variant-attribute = "{" "type" media-type "}" | "{" "charset" charset "}" | "{" "language" 1#language-tag "}" | "{" "length" 1*DIGIT "}" | "{" "features" feature-list "}" | "{" "description" quoted-string "}" | extension-attribute extension-attribute = "{" extension-name extension-value "}" extension-name = token extension-value = *( token | quoted-string | LWS | extension-specials ) extension-specials = <any element of tspecials except <"> and "}"> Examples are {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}} {"paper.html.tables" 0.9 {type text/html} {features tables}} The various attributes which can be present in a variant description are covered in the subsections below. Each attribute may appear only once in a variant description. 5.2 URI The URI attribute gives the URI of the resource from which the variant can be retrieved with a GET request. It can be absolute or relative to the Request-URI. The variant resource may vary (on the Cookie request header, for example), but must not engage in transparent content negotiation itself. 5.3 Source-quality The source-quality attribute gives the quality of the variant, as a representation of the negotiable resource, when this variant is rendered with a perfect rendering engine on the best possible output medium. If the source-quality is less than 1, it often expresses a quality degradation caused by a lossy conversion to a particular data format. For example, a picture originally in JPEG form would have a lower source quality when translated to the XBM format, and a much lower source quality when translated to an ASCII-art variant. Note however, that degradation is a function of the source; an original piece of ASCII-art may degrade in quality if it is captured in JPEG form. The source-quality could also represent a level of quality caused by skill of language translation, ability of a feature set to capture an artistic expression, or clarity of mathematical expression using a particular character set. It is important that content providers do not assign very low source quality values without good reason, as this would limit the ability of users to influence the negotiation process with their own preference settings. The following table should be used as a guide when assigning source quality values: 1.000 perfect representation 0.999-0.900 near threshold of noticeable loss of quality 0.899-0.700 noticeable, but acceptable quality reduction 0.699-0.500 barely acceptable quality 0.499-0.000 severely degraded quality Note that most meaningful values in this table are close to 1. This is due to the fact that quality factors are combined by multiplying them, not by adding them. When assigning source-quality values, content providers must not account for the size of the variant and its impact on transmission and rendering delays. Source-quality values are assigned assuming instantaneous transmission and rendering. This rule ensures that a future mechanism for bandwidth negotiation (see Appendix 19.5.2) can be cleanly added. 5.4 Type, language, length, and charset. The type, language, and length attributes of a variant description can carry the same information as their Content-* response header counterparts as defined in [1]. The counterpart of the charset attribute is the charset parameter which can be present in the Content-Type response header, for example Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-4 Though all of these attributes are optional, it is often desirable to include as many attributes as possible as this will increase the quality of the negotiation process. The length attribute (if present) must reflect the length of the variant alone, and not the sum of the lengths of the variant and any objects inlined or embedded by the variant. Note: A server is not required to maintain a one-to-one correspondence between attributes in the description of a variant and the Content-* headers in responses containing that variant. Examples: If the variant description contains a language attribute, the response does not necessarily have to contain a Content-Language header. If a Content-Language header is present, it does not have to contain an exact copy of the information in the language attribute. 5.5 Features The features attribute specifies how the presence or absence of particular features in the user agent affects the overall quality of the variant. This attribute is covered in Section 6.4. 5.6 Description The description attribute gives a textual description of the variant. It can be included if the URI and normal attributes of a variant are considered too opaque to allow interpretation by the user. If a user agent is showing a menu of available variants compiled from a variant list, and if a variant has a description attribute, the user agent should show the description attribute of the variant instead of showing the normal attributes of the variant. 5.7 Extension-attribute The extension-attribute allows future specifications to incrementally define new dimensions of negotiation, and eases content negotiation experiments under HTTP/1.1. In experimental situations, servers must only generate extension-attributes whose names start with "x-". User agents should ignore all extension attributes they do not recognize. Proxies must not run the network negotiation algorithm if an unknown extension attribute is present in the variant list. 6 Feature negotiation Feature negotiation has been introduced in Section 4.7. This section defines the feature negotiation mechanism. Section 7 contains examples of its use. 6.1 Feature tags A feature tag (ftag) identifies a capability of a user agent or a preference of a user. A feature is said to be `present' in a user agent if the corresponding capability is implemented, or if the user has expressed corresponding preference. ftag = 1*<any CHAR except CTLs or tspecials or "!"> tspecials = "(" | ")" | "<" | ">" | "@" | "," | ";" | ":" | "\" | <"> | "/" | "[" | "]" | "?" | "=" | "{" | "}" | SP | HT (tspecials definition reproduced from [1]) Examples are tables, fonts, blebber, wolx, screenwidth, colordepth An example of the use of feature tags in a variant description is: {"index.html" 1.0 {type text/html} {features tables frames}} Feature-tags are case-insensitive. The definition of a feature tag may state that a feature tag, if present, can have associated with it one or more values which reflect a particular capability or preference. For example, a feature tag `paper' could be present with the values `A4' and `A5'. Note that context may determine whether a feature tag expresses a capability or a preference. The `textonly' tag is naturally present for a text-only browser, but the user of a graphical browser could set the tag to be present if text-only content is preferred to graphical content. As feature registration will be an ongoing process, it is generally not possible for a user agent to know the meaning of all feature tags it can possibly encounter in a variant description. A user agent should treat all features with tags unknown to it as absent. 6.2 Accept-Features header The Accept-Features request header can be used by a client to give information about the presence or absence of certain features. Accept-Features = "Accept-Features" ":" #( feature-expr *( ";" feature-extension ) ) feature-expr = [ "!" ] ftag [ "=" tag-value ] | ftag "=" "{" tag-value "}" | ftag "<=" number | ftag "=" "<" numeric-range ">" | "*" tag-value = token | quoted-string number = 1*DIGIT numeric-range = [ number ] "-" [ number ] feature-extension = token [ "=" ( token | quoted-string ) ] [##Note: an earlier version of this specification did not allow quoted strings as values. Quoted strings were added because they make it easier to map existing negotiation dimensions and formats onto the feature negotiation framework.##] Tag values must be compared case-insensitively, and a token value XYZ is equal to a quoted-string value "XYZ". No feature extensions are defined in this specification. An example is: Accept-Features: blex, !blebber, colordepth<=5, !screenwidth, UA-media={stationary}, paper=a4, !paper="a0", x_version=<100-205>, * The different feature expressions have the following meaning: ftag ftag is present !ftag ftag is absent ftag=V ftag is present with the value V !ftag=V ftag is present, but not with the value V ftag={V} ftag is present with the value V, and not with any other values ftag<=N ftag is present with the numeric values from 0 up to and including N, and not with any other values ftag=<N-M> ftag is present with the numeric values from N up to and including M, and not with any other values. If N is missing, the lower bound is 0. If M is missing, the upper bound is infinity. * makes true all feature predicates (Section 6.3) which were not assigned truth values by other elements of the header [##Question to be resolved: is there an alternative to the ftag=<N-M> notation which looks nicer? We can't use ftag=N-M because it would be syntactically ambiguous with ftag=V: N-M is also a HTTP token value. Maybe tag@N-M is a nicer notation.##] Absence of the Accept-Features header in a request is equivalent to the inclusion of Accept-Features: * [##Note: One possible use of the feature-extensions would be the introduction of quality values on feature tags, see Appendix 19.3C##] 6.3 Feature predicates Feature predicates are used in the features attribute of a variant description. fpred = [ "!" ] ftag [ "=" tag-value ] | ftag "=" "<" numeric-range ">" Examples of feature predicates are blebber, !blebber, paper=a4, colordepth=5, !blex=54, dpi=<300-599>, colordepth=<24-> The network negotiation algorithm can compute the truth value of a feature predicate by using the contents of the Accept-Features header of the current request. The truth value of a predicate is assigned as follows, depending on its form, by using the information in the Accept-Features header: ftag true if the feature is known to be present false if the feature is known to be absent !ftag true if the feature is known to be absent false if the feature is known to be present ftag=V true if the feature is known to be present with the value V, false if the feature is known not to be present with the value V !ftag=V true if the feature is known to be present, but known not to be present with the value V, false if the feature is known to be absent or present with the value V ftag=<N-M> true if the feature is known to be present with some numeric values, while the highest value with which it is present is known and in the range N-M, false if the feature is known to be absent, or if it is known to be present with some numeric values, while the highest value with which it is present is known and not in the range N-M. If N is missing, the lower bound is 0. If M is missing, the upper bound is infinity. If the information in the Accept-Features header does not provide sufficient knowledge to assign a value to a predicate using the above rules, then the value is true if there is a "*" in the Accept-Features header, false otherwise. As an example, the header Accept-Features: blex, !blebber, colordepth<=5, !screenwidth, UA-media={stationary}, paper=a4, !paper="a0", x_version=<100-205>, * makes the following predicates true: blex, colordepth=4, !colordepth=6, colordepth, !screenwidth, UA-media=stationary, !UA-media=screen, paper=a4, !paper=a0, colordepth=<4-6>, !colordepth=<10->, x_version="101", blex=wox, !blex=wox, paper=a5, frtnbf, !frtnbf, frtnbf=4, !frtnbf=4, frtnbf=<1-42> and makes the following predicates false: !blex, blebber, colordepth=6, colordepth=foo, !colordepth, screenwidth, screenwidth=640, !screenwidth=640, x_version=99, UA-media=screen, paper=a0 6.4 Features attribute The features attribute "{" "features" feature-list "}" is used in a variant description to specify how the presence or absence of particular features in the user agent affects the overall quality of the variant. feature-list = 1%feature-list-element feature-list-element = ( fpred | fpred-bag ) [ ":" true-improvement ] [ "/" false-degradation ] fpred-bag = "[" 1%fpred "]" true-improvement = 1*3DIGIT [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] false-degradation = 1*3DIGIT [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] Examples are: {features !textonly [blebber !wolx] colordepth=3:0.7 } {features !blink/0.5 background:1.5 [blebber !wolx]:1.4/0.8 } The default value for the true-improvement is 1. The default value for the false-degradation is 0, or 1 if a true-improvement value is given. The network negotiation algorithm can compute the quality degradation factor associated with the features attribute by multiplying all quality degradation factors of the elements of the feature-list. Note that the result can be a factor greater than 1. A feature list element yields its true-improvement factor if the corresponding feature predicate is true, or if at least one element of the corresponding fpred-bag is true. The element yields its false-degradation factor otherwise. [##Note: The attribute grammar above was designed to be parseable with simple non-recursive parsers. The true-improvement construct does not add expressive power in a theoretical sense, but does make the (automatic) construction of variant lists more straightforward in many cases.##] [##Aside for mathematicians: note the similarity between the feature-list [f1 !f2] [!f1 f3] and the conjunctive normal form of a boolean expression. This similarity implies good things about the expressive power of the features attribute.##] 7 Feature negotiation examples This section contains examples of the use of feature tags in variant descriptions. [##Note: A future version of this document will probably revise and extend this section.##] 7.1 Use of feature tags Feature tags can be used in variant lists to express the quality degradation associated with the presence or absence of certain features. One example is {"index.html.plain" 0.7 }, {"index.html" 1.0 {features tables frames}} Here, the "{features tables frames}" part expresses that index.html uses the features tagged as tables and frames. If these features are absent, the overall quality of index.html degrades to 0. Another example is {"home.graphics" 1.0 {features !textonly}}, {"home.textonly" 0.7 } where the "{features !textonly}" part expresses that home.graphics requires the absence of the textonly feature. If the feature is present, the overall quality of home.graphics degrades to 0. The absence of a feature need not always degrade the overall quality to 0. In the example {"x.html.1" 1.0 {features fonts/0.7}} the absence of the fonts feature degrades the quality with a factor of 0.7. "fonts/0.7" can be pronounced as "fonts, or a degradation of 0.7". In the example {"x.html.2" 0.5 {features fonts:1.5}} the presence of the fonts feature improves the overall quality with a factor of 1.5. If the fonts feature is absent, the overall quality is not affected. "fonts:1.5" can be pronounced as "fonts improves with 1.5". Finally, in the example {"y.html" 1.0 {features [blebber wolx] }} The "[blebber wolx]" expresses that y.html requires the presence of the blebber feature or the wolx feature. This construct can be used in a number of cases: 1. blebber and wolx actually tag the same feature, but they were registered by different people, and some browsers say they support blebber while others say they support wolx. 2. blebber and wolx are HTML tags of different vendors which implement the same functionality, and which were used together in y.html without interference. 3. blebber and wolx are HTML tags of different vendors which implement the same functionality, and y.html uses the tags in a conditional HTML construct. 4. blebber is a complicated HTML tag with only a sketchy definition, implemented by one browser vendor, and wolx indicates implementation of a well-defined subset of the blebber tag by some other vendor(s). y.html uses only this well-defined subset. 7.2 Use of numeric feature tags As an example of negotiation in a numeric area, the following variant list describes four variants with title graphics designed for increasing screen widths: {"home.pda" 1.0 {features pagewidth=<-199> }}, {"home.narrow" 1.0 {features pagewidth=<200-599> }}, {"home.normal" 1.0 {features pagewidth=<600-999> }}, {"home.wide" 1.0 {features pagewidth=<1000-> }} The accept header Accept-Features: pagewidth<=250, * which indicates that the pagewidth tag is present with the numeric values from 0 up to and including 250, makes the following feature predicates false: pagewidth=<-199> pagewidth=<600-999> pagewidth=<1000-> and thereby degrades the overall quality of all above variants except home.narrow to 0. The above variant list has a serious problem, however: a user agent not supporting pagewidth negotiation is given no guidance on which variant to select. The header Accept-Features: !pagewidth, * degrades the overall quality of all above variants to 0. A variant list which solves this problem is {"home.pda" 1.0 {features pagewidth=<-199> }}, {"home.narrow" 1.0 {features pagewidth=<200-599> }}, {"home.normal" 0.99 }, {"home.wide" 1.0 {features pagewidth=<1000-> }} With this list, a user agent which does not support the pagewidth feature will always select the home.normal variant. Another solution would be to describe the normal variant as: {"home.normal" 1.0 {features [pagewidth=<600-999> !pagewidth] }} 8 Feature tag registration Feature tag registration procedures are defined in [4]. Note that the feature tag names in the examples of this specification do not in general reflect the tag naming schemes proposed in [4]. 8.1 Evolution of feature tags The feature negotiation mechanism is designed not to break if 1000+ features, partially overlapping, are registered. This allows for feature tag creation to be an evolutionary process, in which many tags are created while only a few `survive' to become generally used. As the development of new web content formats is currently in an evolutionary phase, rather than a standardization phase, it is thought that this evolutionary approach to feature tag creation has the best chances of keeping up with new developments. 8.2 Core set of feature tags [##In order to jump-start feature negotiation, it seems useful to define a `core set' of feature tags in a separate document. These feature tags would cover the areas of negotiation which are currently well understood, like negotiation on currently stable HTML extensions. The transparent content negotiation specification could then require (or strongly encourage) that user agents implementing transparent content negotiation must recognize (not support!) all tags in the core set. The core set will be proposed in a non-standards track document which will be completed along with this document.##] 8.3 Feature tag design When designing a new feature tag, it is important to take into account that existing user agents which do not recognize the new tag will treat the feature as absent. In general, a new feature tag needs to be designed in such a way that absence of the tag is the default case which reflects current practice. If this design principle is ignored, the resulting feature tag will generally be unusable. As an example, one could try to support negotiation between monochrome and color content by introducing a `color' feature tag, the presence of which would indicate the capability to display color graphics. However, if this new tag is used in a variant list, for example {"rainbow.gif" 1.0 {features color} } {"rainbow.mono.gif" 0.6 {features !color}} then existing user agents, which would not recognize the color tag, would all display the monochrome rainbow. The color tag is therefore unusable in situations where optimal results for existing user agents are desired. To provide for negotiation in this area, one must introduce a `monochrome' feature tag; its presence indicates that the user agent can only render (or the user prefers to view) monochrome graphics. 9 Content negotiation response codes and headers This specification adds one new response code to those defined in HTTP/1.1 [1]. This is a 5xx (Server Error) class response. It also adds six new headers. 9.1 506 Variant Also Negotiates The server has an internal configuration error; the chosen variant resource is configured to engage in transparent content negotiation itself, and is therefore not a proper end point in the negotiation process. 9.2 Accept-Features This request header was defined in Section 6.2. 9.3 Content-Features The Content-Features response header can be used by a server to indicate how the presence or absence of particular features in the user agent affects the overall quality of the response. Content-Features = "Content-Features" ":" feature-list 9.4 Alternates The Alternates response header is used to convey the list of variants bound to a negotiable resource in a response. It can also contain other directives for the content negotiation process. Alternates = "Alternates" ":" 1#( variant-description | alternates-directive ) alternates-directive = ( "min-q" "=" short-float ) | extension-alternates-directive delta-seconds = 1*DIGIT short-float = 1*3DIGIT [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] extension-alternates-directive = token [ "=" ( token | quoted-string ) ] An example is Alternates: {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}}, min-q=0.4 Any relative URI specified in a variant-description field is relative to the request-URI. The min-q directive, if present, can influence decisions made by the network negotiation algorithm on behalf of the origin server. Clients should ignore all extension-alternates-directives they do not understand. A variant list may contain multiple differing descriptions of the same variant. This can be convenient if the variant uses conditional rendering constructs, or if the variant resource returns multiple representations using a multipart media type. 9.6 Negotiate The Negotiate request header can contain directives for any content negotiation process initiated by the request. Presence of the `trans' directive in this header indicates that the user agent supports transparent content negotiation for the current request. Negotiate = "Negotiate" ":" 1#negotiate-directive negotiate-directive = "trans" | negotiate-extension negotiate-extension = token [ "=" token ] An example is Negotiate: trans Servers should ignore all negotiate-directives they do not understand. The presence of a `trans' directive is significant in calculations performed by the network negotiation algorithm. [#Note: The name `trans' is a compromise between the long `transparent' and the short `t'. The HTTP-WG is divided on the naming issue, and `trans' was chosen to minimize overall unhappiness. The WG will only be truly happy if a shorter synonym of `negotiate' can be found.##] 9.7 Variant-Vary The Variant-Vary response header can be used in a list response to record any vary information which applies to the variant data contained in the response, rather than to the response as a whole. Variant-Vary = "Variant-Vary" ":" ( "*" | 1#field-name ) Use of the Variant-Vary header is discussed in Section 10.2. 9B Cache validators To allow for correct and efficient caching and revalidation of negotiated responses, this specification extends the caching model of HTTP/1.1 [1] in various ways. Under the rules in this specification, the maximal age (time since last revalidation) of a variant list bound to a negotiable resource, as received from a cache in an Alternates header, is the maximum of 1. the freshness lifetimes (max-age values) in the responses from the negotiable resource itself, and 2. the freshness lifetimes (max-age values) of the variant resources of the negotiable resource which are also neighbors of the negotiable resource. If no freshness lifetimes are assigned by the origin server, the maximal age of a variant list is the maximum of the freshness lifetime values which were heuristically assigned by the cache. 9B.1 Variant list validators A variant list validator is an opaque value which acts as the cache validator of a variant list bound to a negotiable resource. variant-list-validator = <quoted-string not containing any ";"> If two responses contain the same variant list validator, a cache can treat the Alternates headers in these responses as equivalent (though the headers themselves need not be identical). 9B.2 Structured entity tags A structured entity tag consists of a normal entity tag of which the opaque string is extended with a semicolon followed by a variant list validator: normal | variant list | structured entity tag | validator | entity tag -------------+----------------+----------------- "etag" | "vlv" | "etag;vlv" W/"etag" | "vlv" | W/"etag;vlv" Note that a structured entity tag is itself also an entity tag. The structured nature of the tag allows caching proxies capable of transparent content negotiation to perform certain optimizations. Examples of structured entity tags are: "xyzzy;1234" W/"xyzzy;1234" "gonkxxxx;1234" "a;b;c;;1234" In the last example, the normal entity tag is "a;b;c;" and the variant list validator is "1234". If a transparently negotiated response includes an entity tag, it must be a structured entity tag. The variant list validator in the structured tag must act as a validator for the variant list contained in the Alternates header. The normal entity tag in the structured tag must act as a validator of the entity body in the response and of all entity headers except Alternates. 9B.3 Assigning entity tags to variants To ensure the correct revalidation of transparently negotiated responses, origin servers should maintain some uniqueness requirements when assigning entity tags to variant resources. First, two different variant resources of the same negotiable resource, which are both neighbors of this negotiable resource, may never use the same (normal) entity tag, even not at different times, unless this tag labels exactly the same entity on all occasions. Second, the server should ensure that, if a normal entity tag of a neighboring variant resource is extended to a structured tag, this structured tag never equals a different normal entity tag used by another variant or at another time. An easy way to ensure this is by never including a semicolon in a normal tag. 10 Content negotiation responses If a request on a transparently negotiated resource yields a response with a 2xx status code or any 3xx status code except 304, this response must always be either a list response, a choice response, or an ad hoc response. These responses always include the Alternates header bound to the negotiable resource. Transparently negotiated responses with other status codes may also include an Alternates header, if this is allowed by the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. Note that HTTP/1.1 does not allow an Alternates header in a 304 (Not Modified) response. When generating a response from a resource which does not support transparent content negotiation, a server must never include an Alternates header. A list response always has the 300 (Multiple Choices) response code. A choice response never has the 300 code, and always has a Content-Location header. An ad hoc response never has the 300 code, and never has a Content-Location header. 10.1 List response A list response has the 300 response status code. It must contain (besides the normal headers required by HTTP) the Alternates header bound to the negotiable resource, a Vary header and (unless it was a HEAD request) an entity body which allows the user to manually select the best variant. It is generated as a response to a user agent capable of transparent content negotiation if the server does not (perhaps cannot) choose a particular best variant for the request. An example of a list response is HTTP/1.1 300 Multiple Choices Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:02:21 GMT Alternates: {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} Vary: negotiate, accept, accept-language ETag: "blah;1234" Cache-control: max-age=86400 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 227 <h2>Multiple Choices:</h2> <ul> <li><a href=paper.html.en>HTML, English version</a> <li><a href=paper.html.fr>HTML, French version</a> <li><a href=paper.ps.en>Postscript, English version</a> </ul> The Vary header in the response should ensure correct handling by HTTP/1.1 caching proxies not capable of transparent content negotiation. This header can either be Vary: * or a more elaborate header; see Section 10.5.1. Only the origin server may construct list responses. List responses are cacheable unless indicated otherwise. According to the HTTP/1.1 specification [1], a user agent not capable of transparent content negotiation will, when receiving a list response, display the entity body included in the response. If the response contains a Location header, however, the user agent may automatically redirect to this location. The handling of list responses by clients supporting transparent content negotiation is described in Sections 12.1 and 14. Note: Some existing versions of HTTP/1.0 clients are known to silently ignore list responses, instead of handling them according to the HTTP/1.0 specification [3]. Servers should therefore be careful in sending list responses to non-negotiating HTTP/1.0 user agents, and in making these responses cacheable. 10.2 Choice response A choice response merges a normal HTTP response from the chosen variant, a Content-Location header giving the location of the variant, and the Alternates headers bound to the negotiable resource. Depending on the response code, a choice response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise. Origin servers and proxy caches must construct choice responses with the following algorithm (or any other algorithm which gives equal results). In this algorithm, `the current Alternates header' refers to the Alternates header containing the variant list which was used to choose the best variant, and `the current variant list validator' refers to the validator of this list. Section 10.3 specifies how these two things can be obtained by a proxy cache. The algorithm consists of five steps. 1. Construct a HTTP request message on the best variant resource by rewriting the request-URI and Host header (if appropriate) of the received request message on the negotiable resource. 2. Generate a valid HTTP response message, but not one with the 304 (Not Modified) code, for the request message constructed in step 1. In a proxy cache, the response can be obtained from cache memory, or by passing the constructed HTTP request towards the origin server. If the request is passed on, the proxy may add, modify, or delete If-None-Match and If-Range headers to optimize the transaction with the upstream server. 3. Check for an origin server configuration error. If the HTTP response message generated in step 2 contains an Alternates header, a Content-Location header, or has the 300 status code, then the best variant resource is not a proper end point in the negotiation process, and a 506 (Variant Also Negotiates) error response message should be generated instead of going to step 4. 4. Add a number of headers to the HTTP response message generated in step 2. a. Add a Content-Location header giving the location of the chosen variant. Note: According to the HTTP/1.1 specification [1], if the Content-Location header contains a relative URI, this URI is relative to the URI in the Content-Base header, if present. b. If any Vary headers are present in the response message from step 2, add, for every Vary header, a Variant-Vary header with a copy of the contents of this Vary header. c. Add the current Alternates header. d. Add a Vary header to ensure correct handling by HTTP/1.1 caching proxies not capable of transparent content negotiation. This header can either be Vary: * or a more elaborate header, see Section 10.5. e. To ensure compatibility with HTTP/1.0 caching proxies which do not recognize the Vary header, an Expires header with a date in the past may be added. See Appendix 19.1 for more information. f. If an ETag header is present in the response message from step 2, then extend the entity tag in that header with the current variant list validator, as specified in Section 9B.2. g. Only in proxy caches: set the Age header of the response to max( variant_age , alternates_age ) where variant_age is the age of the best variant response obtained in step 2, calculated according to the rules in the HTTP/1.1 specification [1], and alternates_age is the age of the Alternates header added in step c, calculated according to the rules in Section 10.3. 5. The response may be shortened to a 304 (Not Modified) or 206 (Partial Content) response if an If-No-Match or If-Range header in the original request message allows it according to the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. Note: In this algorithm, a proxy cache always generates a full response message in step 2. In practice, proxy caches can use a more efficient algorithm which produces equal results, but which avoids expanding 304 responses from upstream servers to full responses in step 2 if these responses will be shortened again in step 5. By shortcutting the expansion, a proxy cache can sometimes generate a legal 304 response even if it has not cached the variant data itself. An example of a choice response is: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:05:31 GMT Content-Type: text/html Last-Modified: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:01:14 GMT Content-Length: 5327 Cache-control: max-age=604800 Content-Location: paper.html.en Alternates: {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} Etag: "gonkyyyy;1234" Vary: negotiate, accept, accept-language Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMT <title>A paper about .... An example of forwarding by a proxy cache: if a proxy receives the request GET /paper HTTP/1.1 Host: x.org User-Agent: WuxtaWeb/2.4 Negotiate: trans Accept: text/html, * Accept-Language: en If-None-Match: "gonkyyyy;1234", W/"a;b;1234" and if it can reuse a cached variant list with the validator "1234", taken from a cached response with an age of 8000 seconds, to choose paper.html.en as the best variant, then the proxy can pass on the request GET /paper.html.en HTTP/1.1 Host: x.org User-Agent: WuxtaWeb/2.4 Negotiate: trans Accept: text/html, * Accept-Language: en If-None-Match: "gonkyyyy", W/"a;b" Via: 1.1 fred to an upstream server. On receipt of the response HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:05:31 GMT Etag: "gonkyyyy" from the upstream server, it can return HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:05:31 GMT Etag: "gonkyyyy;1234" Content-Location: paper.html.en Vary: negotiate, accept, accept-language Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMT Via: 1.1 fred Age: 8000 to its own client. 10.2B Ad hoc response An ad hoc response never has the 300 response status code and never has a Content-Location header. It must contain the Alternates header bound to the negotiable resource, and a Vary header if the response is cacheable. It may be generated by an origin server, usually as a response to a non-negotiating user agent, if the server cannot or does not want to send a list or choice response. The Vary header in the response should ensure correct handling by HTTP/1.1 caching proxies not capable of transparent content negotiation. This header can either be Vary: * or a more elaborate header, see Section 10.5.1. Ad hoc responses are cacheable unless indicated otherwise. The handling of ad hoc responses by clients supporting transparent content negotiation is described in Sections 12.1 and 14. An example of an ad hoc response is: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:02:26 GMT Alternates: {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} Vary: negotiate, accept, accept-language Etag: "gonkzzzz;1234" Cache-control: max-age=86400 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 227 <h2>Multiple Choices:</h2> <ul> <li><a href=paper.html.en>HTML, English version</a> <li><a href=paper.html.fr>HTML, French version</a> <li><a href=paper.ps.en>Postscript, English version</a> </ul> Another example is HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:02:28 GMT Alternates: {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} Location: paper.html.en Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 59 This document is available <a href=paper.html.en>here</a>. 10.3 Reusing the Alternates header If a proxy cache has available a negotiated response which is cacheable, fresh, and has an ETag header, then it may extract the Alternates header and associated variant list validator from the response, and reuse them (without unnecessary delay) to negotiate on behalf of the user agent or origin server (Section 14) or to construct a choice response (Section 10.2). The age of the extracted Alternates header is the age of the response from which it is extracted, calculated according to the rules in the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. 10.4 Extracting a normal response from a choice response If a proxy receives a choice response, it may extract and cache the normal HTTP response contained therein. The normal response can be extracted by taking a copy of the choice response and then deleting the Content-Location, Alternates, and Vary headers, renaming any Variant-Vary headers to Vary headers, and shortening the structured entity tag in any ETag header to a normal entity tag. This normal response may then be cached (as a HTTP response to the variant request as constructed in step 1. of Section 10.2) and reused to answer future direct requests on the variant resource according to the rules in the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. This caching of extracted responses can increase overall efficiency with up to a factor 2. For security reasons (see Section 15.2), an extracted normal response may only be cached if the negotiable resource and the variant resource are neighbors. If they are not neighbors, the proxy should reject the choice response as a probable spoofing attempt and pass on a 502 (bad gateway) error response instead. 10.5 Elaborate Vary headers If a HTTP/1.1 [1] server can generate varying responses for a request on a single resource, then the server must include a Vary header in these responses if they are cacheable. This Vary header is a signal to HTTP/1.1 caches that something special is going on. It prevents the caches from returning the currently chosen response to every future request on the resource. Servers engaging in transparent content negotiation will generate varying responses. Therefore, cacheable list, choice, and ad hoc responses must always include a Vary header. The most simple Vary header which can be included is Vary: * This header leaves the way in which the response is selected by the server completely unspecified. A more elaborate Vary header can be used to allow for certain optimizations in HTTP/1.1 caches which are not capable of transparent content negotiation, but which do cache multiple variant responses for one resource. Such a more elaborate Vary header lists all request headers which can be used by the server when selecting a response for a request on the resource. 10.5.1 Construction of an elaborate Vary header Origin servers can construct a more elaborate Vary header in the following way. First, start with the header Vary: negotiate `negotiate' is always included because servers using the network negotiation algorithm will sometimes use the information in the Negotiate header when choosing between a list, choice, or ad-hoc response. Then, if any of the following attributes is present in any variant description in the Alternates header, add the corresponding header name to the Vary header attribute | header name to add -----------+--------------------- type | accept charset | accept-charset language | accept-language features | accept-features The Vary header constructed in this way specifies the response variation which can be caused by the use of the network negotiation algorithm in proxies. If the origin server uses a custom negotiation algorithm which takes additional headers (for example User-Agent) into account, these should also be added to the Vary header. 10.5.2 Caching of an elaborate Vary header Proxy caches cannot construct elaborate Vary headers by themselves, because they may not assume that the origin server uses the standard network negotiation algorithm to vary its responses. However, when extracting an Alternates header from a response (Section 10.3) caches may also extract the Vary header in the response, and reuse it along with the Alternates header. A clean Vary header can however only be extracted if the variant does not vary itself, i.e. if a Variant-Vary header is absent. 10.6 Negotiation on content encoding Negotiation on the content encoding of a response is orthogonal to transparent content negotiation. The rules for when a content encoding may be applied are the same as in HTTP/1.1: servers may content-encode responses that are the result of transparent content negotiation whenever an Accept-Encoding header in the request allows it. When negotiating on content encoding, servers must add the accept-encoding header name to the Vary header of the response, or add `Vary: *', if the response is cacheable. Servers should always be able to provide unencoded versions of every transparently negotiated response. This means in particular that every variant in the variant list must at least be available in an unencoded form. Like HTTP/1.1, this specification allows proxies to encode or decode relayed or cached responses on the fly: the response still contains the same variant as far as transparent content negotiation is concerned. Note that HTTP/1.1 requires proxies to add a Warning header if the encoding of a response is changed. 11 The network negotiation algorithm The network negotiation algorithm is a standardized algorithm by which a party in the negotiation process can make a choice on behalf of another party. For example, a proxy could choose a particular variant on behalf of the user agent in order to speed up the negotiation process by cutting corners (see Section 4.4). General principles underlying the network negotiation algorithm are as follows. - When running on an origin server or proxy, the algorithm will usually only have partial user agent capabilities and preferences information as input. Therefore, instead of a choice for a best variant, the algorithm can also yield an `insufficient data, cannot choose' result. - Decisions are always made on either on behalf of the user agent or on behalf of the origin server. They are made on behalf of the user agent if the user agent indicates that it is capable of transparent content negotiation, and on behalf of the origin server otherwise. - By including an Alternates header in the response, the origin server gives upstream proxies the permission to perform actions prescribed by the network negotiation algorithm instead of actions prescribed by the plain HTTP specification. - It is expected that user agents will use the network negotiation algorithm by default, locally supplying their complete capabilities and preferences to the algorithm, but this is not required. User agents may use customized negotiation algorithms to automatically choose a variant. Such algorithms could for example account for cross-dependencies between dimensions of negotiation. Note that in this specification, `use of the network negotiation algorithm' means use of any algorithm which yields equal results. 11.1 Input The algorithm is always executed for a particular request on a particular transparently negotiable resource. It takes the following information as input. 1. The list of variants of the resource, as present in the Alternates header of the resource. 2. Any "min-q" directive pertaining to the negotiation process, as specified by the Alternates header of the resource. 3. (Partial) Information about capabilities and preferences of the user agent for this particular request, as given in the Accept headers of the request, or, if the algorithm runs on a user agent, as given by the internal capabilities and preferences database. 4. A boolean indicating whether or not the user agent is capable of transparent content negotiation for this request. (This can be determined by looking for a `trans' directive in a Negotiate header, see Section 9.6.) 11.2 Output As its output, the network negotiation algorithm and will yield the appropriate action to be performed. Actions have labels `ACT_UA' for actions performed on behalf of the user agent, and `ACT_OS' for actions performed on behalf of the origin server. 11.2.1 Output for proxies If the algorithm runs on a proxy, there are four different possible results. The first two results can be generated if the user agent is capable of transparent content negotiation: Choice_UA Choice on behalf of the user agent. The best variant may be retrieved and returned in a choice response. List_UA No choice possible, return the list. The Accept headers do not contain sufficient information to make a choice on behalf of the user agent possible. A list response should be returned, allowing the user agent to make the choice itself. The following results can be generated if the user agent is not capable of transparent content negotiation: Choice_OS Choice on behalf of the origin server. The best variant may be retrieved and returned in a choice response. Forward_OS No choice possible, forward the request towards the origin server. The Accept headers do not contain sufficient information to make a choice on behalf of the origin server possible. The request should be forwarded towards the origin server so that it can choose the most appropriate action with a custom algorithm. 11.2.2 Output for origin servers If the algorithm runs on an origin server, all results above are possible. The last result has a different interpretation: Forward_OS No choice possible, internally forward the request to a custom algorithm which chooses an appropriate action. Usually, the appropriate action is the sending of an ad hoc response. 11.2.3 Output for user agents If the algorithm runs on a user agent, only the results List_UA and Choice_UA are possible, with the following interpretations. Choice_UA Automatic choice. A particular variant X must be retrieved and displayed. List_UA No automatic choice possible, none of of the variants can be rendered according to the preferences and capabilities database. An appropriate action like showing an error message with the list of variants to the user must be performed. 11.3 Computing the overall quality values As a first step in the network negotiation algorithm, the overall qualities of the individual variants in the list are computed. The overall quality Q of a variant is the value Q = qs * qt * qc * ql * qf where the factors qs, qt, qc, ql, and qf are determined as follows. qs Is the source quality factor in the variant description. qt The media type quality factor is 1 if there is no type attribute in the variant description, or if there is no Accept header in the request. Otherwise, it is the quality assigned by the Accept header to the media type in the type attribute. Note: If a type is matched by none of the elements of an Accept header, the Accept header assigns the quality factor 0 to that type. qc The charset quality factor is 1 if there is no charset attribute in the variant description, or if there is no Accept-Charset header in the request. Otherwise, the charset quality factor is the quality assigned by the Accept-Charset header to charset in the charset attribute. Note: If a charset does not appear in an Accept-Charset header, the Accept-Charset header assigns the quality factor 0 to that charset. ql The language quality factor is 1 if there is no language attribute in the variant description, or if there is no Accept-Language header in the request. Otherwise, the language quality factor is the highest quality factor assigned by the Accept-Language header to any one of the languages listed in the language attribute. qf The features quality factor is 1 if there is no features attribute in the variant description, or if there is no Accept-Features header in the request. Otherwise, it is the feature negotiation quality degradation value for the features attribute, see Section 6.4. As an example, if a variant list contains the variant description {"paper.html.en" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}} and if the request contains the Accept headers Accept: text/html:q=1.0, */*:q=0.8 Accept-Language: en;q=1.0, fr;q=0.5 the network negotiation algorithm will compute an overall quality for the variant as follows: {"paper.html.en" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}} | | | | | | V V V 0.7 * 1.0 * 0.5 = 0.35 With the above Accept headers, the complete variant list {"paper.html.en" 0.9 {type text/html} {language en}}, {"paper.html.fr" 0.7 {type text/html} {language fr}}, {"paper.ps.en" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {language en}} would yield the following computations: qs * qt * qc * ql * qf = Q --- --- --- --- --- ---- paper.html.en: 0.9 * 1.0 * 1.0 * 1.0 * 1.0 = 0.9 paper.html.fr: 0.7 * 1.0 * 1.0 * 0.5 * 1.0 = 0.35 paper.ps.en: 1.0 * 0.8 * 1.0 * 1.0 * 1.0 = 0.8 11.4 Definite and speculative quality values An overall quality value computed by an origin server or proxy can be either definite or speculative. An overall quality value for a variant is definite if it was computed without using any wildcard characters '*' in the Accept headers, and without the need to use the absence of a particular Accept header. An overall quality value is speculative otherwise. As an example, in the previous section, the quality values of paper.html.en and paper.html.fr are definite, and the quality value of paper.ps.en is speculative because the type application/postscript was matched to the range */*. Definiteness can be defined more formally as follows. An overall quality value Q is definite if the same quality value Q could be computed after the request message is changed in the following way: 1. If an Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Language, or Accept-Features, header is missing from the request, add this header with an empty field. 2. Delete any media ranges containing a wildcard character '*' from the Accept header. Delete the language-range '*', if present, from the Accept-Language header. Delete the wildcard '*', if present, from the Accept-Features header. As another example, the overall quality factor for the variant {"blah.html" 1 {language en-gb} {features blebber [x y]}} is 1 and definite with the Accept headers Accept-Language: en-gb, fr Accept-Features: blebber, x, !y, * and Accept-Language: en, fr Accept-Features: blebber, x, * The overall quality factor is still 1, but speculative, with the Accept headers Accept-language: en-gb, fr Accept-Features: blebber, !y, * and Accept-Language: fr, * Accept-Features: blebber, x, !y, * 11.5 Determining the result The best variant, as determined by the network negotiation algorithm, is the one variant with the highest overall quality value, or, if there are multiple variants which share the highest overall quality, the first variant in the list with this value. 11.5.1 Result for proxies and origin servers When running on a proxy or origin server, the result of the network negotiation algorithm is determined as follows. 1. If the negotiable resource and the best variant resource are not neighbors, then the result is List_UA if the user agent is capable of transparent content negotiation, Forward_OS otherwise. This rule exists for security reasons: it prevents some forms of spoofing, see Section 15.2. 2. If the above rule does not apply, then 1. If the user agent is capable of transparent content negotiation, the result is Choice_UA if the best variant has an overall quality value greater than 0 which is also a definite quality value, and List_UA otherwise. 2. If the user agent is not capable of transparent content negotiation, the result is Choice_OS if the best variant has a (definite or speculative) overall quality value which is greater than 0, or at least the value of the "min-q" directive if this directive is present in the Alternates header. The result is Forward_OS otherwise. 11.5.2 Result for user agents When running on a user agent, the result of the network negotiation algorithm is Choice_UA if the best variant has an overall quality value greater than 0, and List_UA otherwise. 11.6 Construction of short requests Under normal HTTP semantics, the interpretation of the request header `Accept: */*' is `I accept all media types with a quality of 1.0'. One of the most important properties of the network negotiation algorithm is that this interpretation is different if the header is sent by a user agent which supports transparent content negotiation. In this case, the interpretation of the header is `I accept several media types, and assign quality factors from 0.0 up to 1.0 to them. If this information is insufficient to make a choice on my behalf, do not make a choice but send the list of variants'. According to the HTTP/1.1 specification [1], the complete absence of an Accept header from the request is to be interpreted in the same way. This means that a user agent which supports transparent content negotiation can send a minimal request, without any Accept headers but with a Negotiate header, by default: GET /paper HTTP/1.1 Host: x.org User-Agent: WuxtaWeb/2.4 Negotiate: The sending of this minimal request will never have an adverse effect on the quality of the transparent negotiation process: if the requested resource happens to be transparently negotiated, the user agent will always get a list response, so that it can choose the best variant itself. Only the speed of the negotiation process can be affected, because servers will no longer be able to cut corners by choosing on behalf of the user agent. If it is found that the requests to a particular origin server often return a less efficient list response, the user agent can dynamically introduce short Accept headers in its future requests to that server, for example GET /paper HTTP/1.1 Host: x.org User-Agent: WuxtaWeb/2.4 Negotiate: Accept: text/html, application/postscript:q=0.8, */* Accept-language: en, fr;q=0.5 This will increase the chance that the network negotiation algorithm will have sufficient information to choose on behalf of the user agent, thereby optimizing the negotiation process. A good strategy for dynamic extension would be to extend the request with with those media types, languages, charsets, and feature tags mentioned in the variant lists of past list responses from the server. The Accept header in the extended request, if present, will generally contain "*/*" to indicate that only partial information is given in this header. The Accept-Features header, if present, will generally contain a "*" for the same reason. 12 User agent support for transparent negotiation This section specifies the requirements a user agent must satisfy in order to support transparent negotiation. If the user agent contains an internal cache, this cache should satisfy the requirements for proxy caches in Section 14. 12.1 Handling of responses If a list response is received when a resource is accessed, the user agent must be able to automatically choose, retrieve, and display the best variant, or display an error message if it is not capable of displaying any of the available variants. The negotiation algorithm which chooses the best variant (or chooses to display an error message) need not be the network negotiation algorithm. If a choice response or ad hoc response is received when a resource is accessed, the usual action is to automatically display the enclosed entity. A user agent may however choose to apply its (custom) negotiation algorithm to the received variant list, and to automatically retrieve and display another variant if the algorithm indicates that this other variant has a better quality. When receiving a choice response, a user agent should check if the if the negotiable resource and the chosen variant resource are neighbors. If this is not the case, the user agent should reject the choice response as a probable spoofing attempt and display an error message, for example by internally replacing the choice response with a 502 (bad gateway) response. 12.2 Presentation of a transparently negotiated resource If the user agent is displaying a variant which is not an embedded or inlined object and which is the result of transparent negotiation, the following requirements must be met. 1. The user agent should allow the user to review a list of all variants bound to the negotiable resource, and to manually retrieve another variant if desired. There are two general ways of providing such a list. First, the information in the Alternates header of the negotiable resource could be used to make an annotated menu of variants. Second, the entity included in a list response of the negotiable resource could be displayed. Note that a list response can always be obtained by doing a GET request on the negotiable resource with a Negotiate header but without Accept headers. 2. The user agent should make available though its user interface some indication that the resource being displayed is a negotiated resource instead of a plain resource. It should also allow the user to examine the variant list included in the Alternates header. Such a notification and review mechanism is needed because of privacy considerations, see Section 15.1. 3. If the user agent shows the URI of the displayed information to the user, it should be the negotiable resource URI, not the variant URI that is shown. This encourages third parties, who want to refer to the displayed information in their own documents, to make a hyperlink to the negotiable resource as a whole, rather than to the variant resource which happens to be shown. Such correct linking is vital for the interoperability of content across sites. 4. Similarly, if the user agent stores a reference to the displayed information for future use, for example in a hotlist, it should store the negotiable resource URI, not the variant URI. It is encouraged, but not required, that some of the above functionality is also made available for inlined or embedded objects, and when a variant which was selected manually is being displayed. 13 Origin server support for transparent negotiation This section covers origin server support from a HTTP viewpoint. see Appendix 19.2 for implementation considerations. 13.1 Requirements To implement transparent negotiation on a resource, the origin server must be able to send a list response when getting a GET request on the resource. It should also be able to send appropriate list responses for HEAD requests. The origin server must always send a list response for a request with a Negotiate header but without Accept headers. The origin server may also return choice responses and ad hoc responses, except in the special case above. The negotiation algorithm used need not be the network negotiation algorithm. Negotiability is a binary property: a resource is either transparently negotiated, or it is not. Origin servers should not vary the negotiability of a resource, or the variant list bound to that resource, based on the request headers which are received. The variant list and the property of being negotiated may however change through time. The Cache-Control header can be used to control the propagation of such time-dependent changes through caches. It is the responsibility of the author of the negotiable resource to ensure that all resources in the variant list serve the intended content, and that the variant resources do not engage in transparent content negotiation themselves. An origin server may shorten a list, choice, or ad-hoc response to a 304 (Not Modified) or 206 (Partial Content) response if an If-No-Match or If-Range header in the request message allows it according to the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. 13.2 Negotiation on transactions other than GET and HEAD If a resource is transparently negotiable, this only has an impact on the GET and HEAD transactions on the resource. It is not possible (under this specification) to do transparent content negotiation on the direct result of a POST request. However, a POST request can return an unnegotiated 303 (See Other) response which causes the user agent to do a GET request on a second resource. This second resource could then use transparent content negotiation to return an appropriate final response. The figure below illustrates this. Server ______ proxy ______ proxy ______ user x.org cache cache agent < ------------------------------------- | POST http://x.org/cgi/submit | <form contents in request body> | -------------------------------------- > 302 See Other | Location: http://x.org/result/OK | | < ------------------------------------- | GET http://x.org/result/OK.nl | small Accept headers | able to choose on behalf of user agent | ------------------------------------- > choice response with | ..result/OK.nl variant | displays OK.nl See the HTTP/1.1 specification [1] for details on the 303 (See Other) response code. Note that this response code is not understood by most HTTP/1.0 clients. 14 Proxy support for transparent negotiation Transparent content negotiation is designed to work through proxies which only implement the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. Thus, in a sense, all HTTP/1.1 proxies support transparent content negotiation. Plain HTTP/1.1 allows proxies to cache list, choice, and ad hoc responses, and to efficiently revalidate them by using the If-None-Match header. This specification defines additional optimization mechanisms. First, a proxy may sometimes reuse an Alternates header taken from a previous response (Section 10.3) to negotiate on behalf of the user agent or origin server and to construct choice responses (Section 10.2). Proxies must not use custom negotiation algorithms, they may only use the network negotiation algorithm. Second, if a proxy receives a choice response, it may extract and cache the normal response embedded therein, as described in Section 10.4. Third, a proxy may shorten a list, choice, or ad-hoc response to a 304 (Not Modified) or 206 (Partial Content) response if an If-No-Match or If-Range header in the request message allows it according to the HTTP/1.1 specification [1]. 15 Security and privacy considerations 15.1 Accept headers revealing information of a private nature Accept headers, in particular Accept-Language headers, may reveal information which the user would rather keep private unless it will directly improve the quality of service. For example, a user may not want to send language preferences to sites which do not offer multi-lingual content. The transparent content negotiation mechanism allows user agents to omit sending of the Accept-Language header by default, without this affecting the outcome of the negotiation process if transparently negotiated multi-lingual content is accessed. However, even if Accept headers are never sent, the automatic selection and retrieval of a variant by a user agent will reveal a preference for this variant to the server. A malicious service author could provide a page with `fake' negotiability on (ethnicity-correlated) languages, with all variants actually being the same English document, as a means of obtaining privacy-sensitive information. Such a plot would however be visible to an alert victim if the list of available variants and their properties is reviewed. Some additional privacy considerations connected to Accept headers are discussed in [1]. 15.2 Spoofing of responses from variant resources The caching optimization in Section 10.4 gives the implementer of a negotiable resource control over the responses cached for all of its variant resources which are neighbors. This is a security problem if a neighboring variant resource belongs to another author. To provide security in this case, the HTTP server will have to filter the Content-Location headers in the choice responses generated by the negotiable resource implementation. 16 Acknowledgments Work on HTTP content negotiation has been done since at least 1993. The author is unable to trace the origin of many of the ideas incorporated in this document. This document builds on an earlier specification of content negotiation as recorded in [2]. Many members of the HTTP working group have contributed to the work reflected in this document. The authors wish to thank the individuals who have commented on earlier versions of this document, including Brian Behlendorf, Daniel DuBois, Ted Hardie, Larry Masinter, and Roy T. Fielding. 17 References [1] Fielding et al, Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1. Internet-Draft draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-06.txt, HTTP Working Group, July 4, 1996. [2] Roy T. Fielding, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, and Tim Berners-Lee. Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1. Internet-Draft draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-01.txt, HTTP Working Group, January, 1996. [3] T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, H. Frystyk, Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0. RFC 1945. MIT/LCS, UC Irvine, May 1996. [4] K. Holtman, A. Mutz, Feature Tag Registration Procedures. Internet-Draft draft-ietf-http-feature-reg-00.txt, HTTP Working Group, October 30, 1996. 18 Authors' addresses Koen Holtman Technische Universiteit Eindhoven Postbus 513 Kamer HG 6.57 5600 MB Eindhoven (The Netherlands) Email: koen@win.tue.nl Andrew H. Mutz Hewlett-Packard Company 1501 Page Mill Road 3U-3 Palo Alto CA 94304, USA Fax +1 415 857 4691 Email: mutz@hpl.hp.com 19 Appendices 19.1 Adding an Expires header to ensure HTTP/1.0 compatibility To ensure compatibility with HTTP/1.0 caching proxies which do not recognize the Vary header, an Expires header with a date in the past can be be added to the response, for example Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMT If this is done by an origin server, it should usually also include a Cache-Control header for the benefit of HTTP/1.1 caches, for example Cache-Control: max-age=604800 which overrides the freshness lifetime of zero seconds specified by the included Expires header. 19.2 Origin server implementation considerations 19.2.1 Implementation with a CGI script Transparent content negotiation has been designed to allow a broad range of implementation options at the origin server side. A very minimal implementation can be done using the CGI interface. The CGI script below is an example. #!/bin/sh echo $HTTP_NEGOTIATE | awk '$0~"^(|.*,)[\t ]*trans[\t ]*(|,.*)$" \ { print "Status: 300 Multiple Choices" }' - cat - <<'blex' Alternates: {"stats.tables.html" 1.0 {type text/html} {features tables}}, {"stats.html" 0.8 {type text/html}}, {"stats.ps" 0.95 {type application/postscript}} Vary: * Content-Type: text/html <title>Multiple Choices for Web Statistics

Multiple Choices for Web Statistics:

blex The Alternates header in the above script must be read as a single line. The script generates a list response for user agents capable of transparent content negotiation, and an ad hoc 200 (OK) response for all non-negotiating agents. 19.2.2 Direct support by HTTP servers Sophisticated HTTP servers could make a transparent negotiation module available to content authors. Such a module could incorporate implementations of the network negotiation algorithm (Section 11) and the algorithm for generating choice responses (Section 10.2). The definition of interfaces to such modules is beyond the scope of this document. 19.2.3 Web publishing tools Web publishing tools could automatically generate several variants of a document (for example the original TeX version, a HTML version with tables, a HTML version without tables, and a Postscript version), together with an appropriate variant list in the interface format of a HTTP server transparent negotiation module. This would allow documents to be published as transparently negotiable resources. 19.3 Open issues in transparent content negotiation At the time of writing of this specification, the following issues are still open. - The feature tag registration process has yet to be defined. - A core set of feature tags (Section 8.2) has not yet been defined, though there has been some related work on display attributes, see Appendix 19.4.1. - Though it is expected that the feature negotiation framework will solve many current and future negotiation problems, it is also expected that there will remain current and future negotiation problems not solved by feature negotiation. Currently, there is little experience in this area. 19.3B Server-side rendering engines Cache efficiency considerations generally demand that content negotiation is limited to a few variants, and that any fine-tuning of a representation (for example the scaling of a title image to fit the exact screen width) is done at the user agent side. However, some negotiation models may demand the use of server-side rendering engines, which fine-tune a representation depending on exact parameters supplied by the user agent. This appendix discusses how to extend the transparent negotiation framework with a mechanism for reliably delivering such parameters to the server. The variant description syntax can be extended with an optional sent-tags attribute: sent-tags-attribute = "{" "send-tags" 1%ftag "}" The presence of this attribute would indicate that the variant URI gives access to a server side rendering engine. An example variant description is: {"paper.server-render.ps" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {send-tags paper-size dpi printcolor print-gamma}} If this variant is chosen as the best variant and retrieved in a GET request, the user agent would extend the paper.server-render.ps URI with those feature tags in the send-tags attribute it supports, and their associated preferred values if applicable: GET paper.server-render.ps?paper-size=A4&dpi=600 HTTP/1.1 Thus, the exact rendering parameters end up at the server side rendering engine. The URI is extended using the form submission syntax for downwards compatibility reasons: this allows the list response to contain a HTML form giving access to the engine. Server-side rendering engines may by interesting as a fallback mechanism when new client-side rendering engines are introduced. The following variant list illustrates this: {"paper.html" 0.8 {type text/html}}, {"paper.tex" 1.0 {type application/x-tex} {features client-render-tex}}, {"paper.server-render.ps" 1.0 {type application/postscript} {features !client-render-tex} {send-tags paper-size dpi printcolor print-gamma}} 19.3C Quality factors in the Accept-Features header The feature negotiation framework specified in Section 6 does not allow for the introduction of new dimensions like the type and language dimension, in which the user can express a relative preference for each of the elements by sending quality factors in the Accept header. To support the introduction of such dimensions, the Accept-Features header syntax could be extended with quality factors. An example would be the following Accept-Features header: Accept-Features: paper=a4;q=1.0, paper=a5;q=0.8, !paper=a3, * Examples of overall quality factors computed using this header would be: 0.8 for {"x" 1.0 {features paper=a5}} 1.0 for {"y" 1.0 {features paper=a4/0.95}} 0.0 for {"z" 1.0 {features paper=a3}} Quality factors could also be useful on value-less feature tags, for example Accept-Features: tables, larger_2x;q=0.7, * would degrade the overall quality of any variant which uses the `larger_2x' feature with a factor of 0.7. The quality factor on `larger_2x' would express the relative preference of getting a variant which is about twice as large as the smallest variant. Examples of overall quality factors computed using this header would be: 0.8 for {"small" 0.8 {features tables}} 0.7 for {"large" 1.0 {features tables larger_2x/1}} In this example, the small variant is chosen: the resource author assigned a lower source quality to the small variant, but the difference in source quality was not big enough to offset the user's dislike of getting a variant which is twice as large. Note that the `/1' causes user agents which do not recognize the `larger_2x' tag to select the large variant. The proposed semantics for quality factors on feature tags are as follows. First, the Accept-Features headers element ftag;q=Q assigns the quality factor Q to the feature predicate `ftag' made true by it, and the elements ftag=V;q=Q ftag={V};q=Q ftag<=N;q=Q assign the quality value Q to all feature predicates `ftag=X' made true by them, but not to the plain predicate `ftag'. All true feature predicates not explicitly assigned a quality factor get the default factor 1. To account for the quality factors on the feature tags, the overall quality of the variant is multiplied with the quality factor of every `active feature predicate' in the variant description. A predicate is active if it 1. is made true by the Accept-Features header 2. does not start with ! 3. and, if appearing in an fpred-bag, does not appear after another predicate which also satisfies 1. and 2. As an example, with Accept-Features: aa, !bb, cc;q=0.7, dd, * the variant described as {"x" 1.0 {features aa/0.8 !xx !bb [!yy cc dd]}} has the active feature predicates `aa' and `cc', while the `!bb' and `dd' predicates are not active. Note: If a user sends quality factors with feature tags not specifically designed to have them, this will in general not produce improved negotiation results. For example, depending on the particular variant list, sending `animated_gifs;q=0.8' to express a mild dislike of animated gifs can easily fail to be effective. Sending `!animated_gives' could be a bit more effective, but only a user agent configuration option which completely disables animated gifs can deliver good results in all cases. 19.4 Other negotiation specifications 19.4.1 User-Agent Display Attributes (Comments based on the internet draft draft-mutz-http-attributes-01.txt.) User-Agent Display Attributes provide a means for an HTTP client to inform a server about its display capabilities. The draft mentioned above defines a number of such attributes as feature tags. 19.4.2 HTTP/1.2 Extension Protocol (PEP) (Comments based on the internet draft draft-ietf-http-pep-02.txt.) PEP is a system for HTTP clients, servers, and proxies to reliably reason about custom extensions to HTTP. Its purpose places PEP one meta-level above transparent content negotiation, which is intended as a (standardized) extension of HTTP. Transparent content negotiation and HTTP/1.1 were both carefully designed to work together without requiring meta-negotiation. Therefore, transparent content negotiation does not require or rely on the use of PEP. Though PEP and transparent content negotiation both offer extensible negotiation frameworks, they operate in different areas of negotiation. PEP negotiates on the use of mutually understood protocol extensions, while transparent content negotiation is a method for efficiently retrieving the best representation of some information. Thus, deployment and use of PEP can be orthogonal to deployment and use of transparent content negotiation. Though some elements of PEP resemble some elements of transparent content negotiation, it does not seem advantageous to attempt to generalize (parts of) both specifications in order to allow sharing of code by implementations. The two specifications seem to have more unrelated parts than similar parts. 19.5 Related issues 19.5.1 Current negotiation practice In current practice, most user agents send short Accept headers in every request. These headers usually inadequately describe the user agent capabilities and user preferences, except maybe for inline image requests. Servers providing multiple representations of the same information usually do so under different URIs, and allow users to manually select a representation by clicking a particular link. Some HTTP servers implement extensive negotiation capabilities based on HTTP/1.0 headers. However, with current user agents, these capabilities can seldom be used effectively. Some origin servers use the contents of the User-Agent request header for negotiation purposes. These contents sometimes allow the server to infer information about capabilities which cannot be expressed with the existing Accept headers. Some sites use Netscape cookies (persistent client state http cookies) to implement a user preferences mechanism. 19.5.2 Bandwidth negotiation With a bandwidth negotiation mechanism, the time needed to retrieve a particular variant over the network can be taken into account during the negotiation process. Work on mechanisms for bandwidth negotiation has been done since at least 1993, but this work has not yet yielded a successful standard mechanism for bandwidth negotiation. Cascaded proxy caches introduce additional complexity in this area. This specification does not attempt to solve the problem of bandwidth negotiation. There is some hope that the feature negotiation framework will allow the introduction of an adequate solution for bandwidth negotiation. Expires: May 21, 1997