Re: [hybi] Call for Consensus: draft-tyoshino-hybi-websocket-perframe-deflate as WG Item

[Brian <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 5:10 PM, John Tamplin <[e-mail]> wrote:

> As Greg said, if we aren't going to use a reserved bit for per-frame
> compression, where we hope to reduce the payload to a small number of bytes
> already so an extra byte to indicate compression may be expensive, what
> exactly will we use it for?
>
> My opinion is we should allocate a reserved bit for per-frame compression,
> create an extension to indicate that is to be used for compression and a
> way to select the compression algorithm, and define deflate with no state
> shared across frames as a required compression algorithm to be supported if
> no other algorithm is negotiated.  We can then define more effective
> compression algorithms that provide ways of sharing compression state
> across frames, for example, though we still have to work out the above
> questions though.
>

That's true enough.  If ever there were a perfect use for the reserved bits
it would be this.  It's just such a rare resource and it's still early days
for WebSockets in general that the gut reaction is to keep them reserved at
all costs until some mythical extension suddenly jumps out as worthy enough
to have one of the sacred bits ceremonially bestowed upon it from on high.

I'm good with a reserved bit being allocated for per frame compression.

Brian