Re: The use of binary data in any part of HTTP 2.0 is not good

["Adrien W. de Croy" <[e-mail]>]

the thing that will make debugging harder won't be binary vs text, but 
the inter-dependence of messages.  Especially when it comes to looking 
through debug logs for issues.

On-the-wire, you already need to piece together a TCP stream to see 
what's going on, so having http messages effectively split over multiple 
frames (e.g. delta encoding, or compression) only becomes a problem when 
you don't capture enough to decode.

I think it might be worth-while specifying a requirement for a "debug" 
option for senders of binary messages which turns off all other 
optimisations, such as caching unchanged headers etc (so they are sent 
every time).  Just an idea.


------ Original Message ------
From: "Mark Nottingham" <[e-mail]>
To: "William Chan (陈智昌)" <[e-mail]>
Cc: "Pablo" <[e-mail]>; "HTTP Working Group" 
<[e-mail]>
Sent: 21/01/2013 12:04:08 p.m.
Subject: Re: The use of binary data in any part of HTTP 2.0 is not good
>In one of our recent meetings, one of the grey-bearded IETF old-timers 
>(I forget which, sorry) said that a textual-protocol was a 
>nice-to-have, but that it shouldn't be a determining factor in design.
>
>I.e., if you can get everything you need out of a protocol, *and* make 
>it textual, do so, but if it detracts from the value you get from it, 
>don't let that constrain you.
>
>FWIW, I think that's a good rule of thumb. However, this means that the 
>community is going to need *excellent* tooling for analysing, 
>debugging, etc. HTTP traffic; and I don't just mean a Wireshark plugin!
>
>Cheers,
>
>
>On 21/01/2013, at 9:36 AM, William Chan (陈智昌) <[e-mail]> 
>wrote:
>
>>  There are many advantages to using binary data. If you would like a
>>  textual representation of a protocol, I advise using a utility to
>>  generate one for you.
>>
>>  On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Pablo <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>  Hello,
>>>
>>>    I have readed this document
>>>  http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-protocol/spdy-protocol-draft1 
>>>today [1].
>>>
>>>  I just wanted to say that I think that the use of any binary data 
>>>(framing,
>>>  header compression, etc.) in any place of the "header" part of HTTP 
>>>protocol
>>>  is not good; so, please only use plaintext for HTTP 2.0 because, 
>>>otherwise,
>>>  that will make very difficult to "see" the headers's protocol :)
>>>
>>>  Thats all,
>>>  Thanks for reading this few lines, sorry for my basic English, and I 
>>>hope
>>>  that you can re-think all this of using binary data in any part of 
>>>HTTP X.X
>>>  (ej: session layer).
>>>
>>>
>>>  [1] I started knowing about HTTP 2.0 here:
>>>  http://webscannotes.com/2012/10/09/http-2-0-officially-in-the-works/
>>>
>>
>
>--
>Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
>
>
>
>