IETF-72 httpbis minutes

Slides

Security Requirements for HTTP
RFC2616bis Draft Overview

Minutes

          Minutes of the HTTPbis Working Group meeting in Dublin, July 2008
          
          Submitted by Mark Nottingham
          
          * 30 min - HTTP draft overview [Julian Reschke]
          
          Julian Reschke started us with an overview of progress to date on the
          HTTP drafts; see attached presentation "RFC2616bis Draft Overview."
          
          * 60 min - HTTP issues discussion
          
          Discussion centred around i18n in headers and the BNF transition, along
          similar lines as before.
          
          i18n discussion meandered considerably, but ended with agreement in
          the room that advice should be added to the effect that people should
          be liberal with respect to consuming both UTF-8 and ASCII in headers,
          but SHOULD NOT mint headers in anything but ASCII.
          
          In the course of discussion header i18n, it was suggested that a separate
          draft on using Content-Disposition in HTTP might be useful, to clarify
          its status and problems surrounding it.
          
          Regarding the list production in BNF, there was again a wide-ranging
          discussion, concluding with a tentative plan whereby a shorthand is used
          for reader convenience in the spec, but an appendix contains the full,
          legal BNF (ideally, with a menchanical translation from the former to
          the latter).
          
          There was also wide support in the room for deprecating the production
          of headers with line folding, at least for common purposes (HTTP over
          SMTP was mentioned as one exception).
          
          * 45 min - Security properties overview and discussion [Paul Hoffman]
          
          See attached presentation, "Security Requirements for HTTP."
          
          Discussion centred around whether there's a need to split the document
          into 'browser' and 'non-browser' use cases (or a similar division) with
          no clear conclusion, other than giving the editors food for thought. A
          number of comments were also made as to the tension between making this
          document useful and actually delivering it, especially considering that
          its contents are likely to age quickly.
          
          * 10 min - Next steps / schedule review
          
          It was tentatively stated that we won't be meeting in Minneapolis,
          although there may be a design team effort in the meantime to work on
          suggested resolutions for issues, and generally kick things along.