RFC 2295 (rfc2295) - Page 1 of 58
Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group K. Holtman
Request for Comments: 2295 TUE
Category: Experimental A. Mutz
Hewlett-Packard
March 1998
Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP
Status of this Memo
This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
HTTP allows web site authors to put multiple versions of the same
information under a single URL. Transparent content negotiation is
an extensible negotiation 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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction................................................4
1.1 Background................................................4
2 Terminology.................................................5
2.1 Terms from HTTP/1.1.......................................5
2.2 New terms.................................................6
3 Notation....................................................8
4 Overview....................................................9
4.1 Content negotiation.......................................9
4.2 HTTP/1.0 style negotiation scheme.........................9
4.3 Transparent content negotiation scheme...................10
4.4 Optimizing the negotiation process.......................12
4.5 Downwards compatibility with non-negotiating user agents.14
4.6 Retrieving a variant by hand.............................15
4.7 Dimensions of negotiation................................15
Holtman & Mutz Experimental