Editorial notes on p6

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

[ Yes, I'm talking to myself here... if anyone has a problem with the proposed edits below, please say so; if I don't hear otherwise, I'll incorporate ]

* 1.1 Purpose doesn't need to be separate from 1 Introduction; suggest combining them into Introduction.

* 1.1 "message storage, retrieval, and deletion" --> "storage, retrieval, and deletion of messages"

* 1.1 "A fresh cache response" --> "A fresh response"

* 1.1 s/transfers/overhead/

* 1.1 last sentence needs a reference to "serving stale responses"

* 1.2 p6 is the only part with a separate 'terminology' section; the definitions should be distributed to first use, like the other parts.

* 1.2 "private cache" is defined as being "dedicated to a single user."  I suspect this should be "... single user agent" to be in keeping with our separation from user concerns.

* 1.2 "The age of a response is the time since it was sent..." --> "The time since a response was sent..."

* 1.2 Move the parenthetical "(either explicit or heuristic)" from the definition of "stale" to "freshness lifetime"

* 1.2 The definition of "strong validator" is too detailed; it should (mostly) rely on the definition in p4.

* 2. s/locally-desired/local/

* 2. "Therefore, HTTP cache requirements are focused on preventing..." needs something like this appended to the sentence: "...rather than mandating that caches always store and reuse particular responses."

* 2. "The default cache key consists of..." --> "The primary cache key consists of..."

* 2. "...use only the URI as the key." --> "Use only the URI as the primary cache key."

* 3. bullet point "contains a s-maxage response cache directive..." needs a reference.

* 3. "...and implements any cache-specific behavior." --> "...and implements all specified caching-related behavior."

* 3. "...many caches will not store a response..."  s/many/some

* 4. "For a presented request, a cache MUST NOT use a stored response, unless:"  --> "When presented with a request, a cache MUST NOT reuse a stored response, unless:"

* 4. "...a cache MUST send a single Age header field..." --> "...a cache MUST generate an Age header field, replacing any present..."

* 4. "...also forward a request with..." --> "...also forward the request with..."

* 4. "...revalidating them on every use."  s/on/upon/

* 4.1 Title "Freshness Model" should just be "Freshness"

* 4.1 "The freshness_lifetime is defined in Section 4.1.1; the current_age is..."  s/the//

* 4.1 "...it is considered invalid."  --> "...that directive's value is considered invalid."

* 4.1.2 "Therefore, servers are encouraged to send explicit directives..." --> "Therefore, origin servers are encouraged to generate explicit directives..."

* 4.1.3 The text at the end regarding problems in date parsing is not specific to calculating age; it needs to be moved up to the next highest level (freshness), possibly in a new subsection.

* 4.1.4 Para "If a cache receives..." should be prefixed with "Note that..."

* 4.2 Title "Validation Model" should just be "Validation"

* 4.2 "When sending such a conditional request..."  This and the following paragraph are awkward.

* 4.2 "...whose value is that of the ETag header field(s) from all responses stored..."  s/all/relevant/

* 4.2.1 "...identifies the selected representation."  append "for update" (3 occurrences) 

* 4.4 This section should either be incorporated into 3.3, or made a subsection of it.

* 6 "For example, the request that caused the change at the origin server might not have gone through the cache where a response is stored."  --> "For example, a state-changing request might invalidate responses in the caches it travels through, but responses still might be stored in other caches that is has not."

* 7.2 "Note: HTTP/1.0 caches might not implement Cache-Control, and might only implement Pragma: no-cache." --> "Note: some HTTP/1.0 caches might not implement Cache-Control."

* 7.2.1 Request Cache-Control directives should be alphabetically ordered.

* 7.2.1.4 "expiration time" --> "freshness lifetime" (two instances)

* 7.2.2 Response Cache-Control directives should be alphabetically ordered.

* 7.2.2.2 s/standard//  (two instances)

* 7.2.2.2 "Many HTTP/1.0 caches will not recognize or obey this directive."  --> "Although it has been back-ported to many implementations, some HTTP/1.0 caches will not..."

* 7.2.3 Split into multiple paragraphs.




--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/