[Web-SIG] FW: Closing #63: RFC2047 encoded words

[Brian Smith]

Alan Kennedy wrote:
> [Brian]
> > Here is the change that removes the use of RFC 2047 from HTTP in
> HTTPbis.
> 
> Grand so; all we need to do is to wait for everyone to stop using
> HTTP/1.1, start using HTTP/bis, and our problems are at an end!

HTTPbis *is* (will be) HTTP/1.1. It doesn't define a new version of the
protocol. RFC 2616 has many mistakes that make it a poor description of
HTTP/1.1 and the purpose of HTTPbis is to fix those mistakes. That is a
little bit of an over-simplification.

Try to create a RFC2616-compliant message that uses RFC 2047 encoding. It
can't be done because RFC 2047 was never integrated into the RFC 2616
grammar. That is why HTTPbis removed the vague reference to RFC 2047 from
the prose. If RFC 2616 provided a way of using RFC 2047 in HTTP messages
then HTTPbis would still allow it but recommend that implementations SHOULD
NOT use it (similar to how line-folding is deprecated but still allowed in
HTTPbis).

- Brian