theora - Dec 2009 - X-Content-Duration HTTP header

Hi ppl,

we've been using a header called X-Content-Duration on some
applications to communicate between a client and a server about the
duration of a video (or audio) file.

I've just been told by some W3C people that we should not name HTTP
headers (even if intermediate) with "X-". (see email thread excerpt
below)

Should we move forward and register a provisional header as
"Content-Duration" and adapt all the software while there's not
too
much of it out there?

Cheers,
Silvia.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at gmx.de>
Date: Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 12:17 AM
Subject: Re: Public feedback on HTML5 video
To: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com>
Cc: robert at ocallahan.org, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3c at gmail.com>,
Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com>, Gavin Carothers
<gavin at carothers.name>, HTMLwg <public-html at w3.org>,
comments at daringfireball.net


Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at
gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>> Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>>>
>>> ...
>>> In Ogg and Annodex we have used a HTTP parameter called
>>> X-Content-Duration to communicate the duration of a video to a user
>>> agent. It may be an idea to introduce / implement this more widely
for
>>> any content type, since typically it is not much of a problem for a
>>> server extension to calculate the duration of a video, but the user
>>> agent has to do all sorts of acrobatics to find out such. There is
>>> just the issue of creating server extensions...
>>> ...
>>
>> *Please* do not introduce "X-*" headers. "X-"
doesn't have any special
>> meaning in message headers; see
>> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3864#section-2.1> for details on
registration
>> procedures.
>
> X-Content-Duration is used to test out such a header before putting it
> forward for registration. If ppl are happy to use such a header
> everywhere, it indeed needs to be registered properly.
But experience shows this doesn't work. Once a header gets implemented
independently, it's hard to rename it.

That's why RFC 3864 defined a "provisional" registry.

Best regards, Julian

2009/12/29 Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com>:
> I've just been told by some W3C people that we should not name HTTP
> headers (even if intermediate) with "X-". (see email thread
excerpt
> below)
Well, hooray. Moving it to an official header seems reasonable to me.
> Should we move forward and register a provisional header as
> "Content-Duration" and adapt all the software while there's
not too
> much of it out there?
We'll have to support both forever, of course, like application/x-ogg.
But I think adoption is low enough there's still time, assuming the
firefox folks agree.

Looking at the provisional template, there has to be a citeable spec
(but I guess it doesn't have to be an rfc?). Can that just be a wiki
page, or should we do an rfc draft and point to that for the
provisional registry with the expectation of publishing it as an rfc
once there's more adoption?

I've created http://wiki.xiph.org/ContentDuration as a place to work on a
draft.

 -r

On 12/30/2009 5:58 PM, Ralph Giles wrote:
>
>
> I've created http://wiki.xiph.org/ContentDuration as a place to work on
a draft.
RFC 3803 seems to be for a Content-Duration header. Unfortunately it is
integer value of seconds only.

Chris.
-- 
http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz