Removing CommentURL
Larry Masinter (masinter@parc.xerox.com)
Fri, 25 Jul 1997 11:49:53 PDT
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Since this argument seems to have convinced one person,
I thought I would make it more broadly and see if I could convince
someone else.
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Message-ID: <33D6EDD2.130@parc.xerox.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 22:53:22 -0700
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Organization: Xerox PARC
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To: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu>
CC: dmk@bell-labs.com
Subject: Re: can't really be LAST CALL, "HTTP State Management Mechanism (Rev1) " to Propo
References: <199707240147.VAA23530@mescaline.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
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I think that the problem is an important problem to solve, but that the
proposal doesn't actually solve it, and is, in fact, impractical.
> Effectively, showing the CommentURL merely involves going to a different
> page, probably with a different set of cookies. I don't see what's
> really hard about it. Is there something I'm missing?
The proposal (CommentURL) is easy to implement. I am not claiming that
it is 'hard'.
I just think it is not very useful.
> It is likely that at some point in the future I will implement a UA
> which will support the CommentURL, and I would like the CommentURL
> to be available.
The fact that you would like this feature to be available doesn't
actually address the question of whether the feature actually addresses
the problem in a significant way.
I don't think our adding CommentURLs in the protocol will actually help
most users decide whether or not they want to accept cookies.
That's why I'm opposed to the proposal: it makes the protocol more
complicated while it won't actually be useful. It *could* be useful,
there are *some* people for whom it will be useful, but it won't be
useful in general, or generally used, most sites won't have CommentURLs,
most clients won't have useful interactions with CommentURLs, and we'll
have this extra widget in the protocol which doesn't actually do most
people any good.
Do you still disagree?
Larry
--
http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter
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