negotiable resource implementation.

14.3 Security holes revealed by negotiation

   Malicious servers could use transparent content negotiation as a
   means of obtaining information about security holes which may be
   present in user agents.  This is a risk in particular for negotiation
   on the availability of scripting languages and libraries.

15 Internationalization considerations

   This protocol defines negotiation facilities which can be used for
   the internationalization of web content.  For the
   internationalization of list response bodies (section 10.1), HTTP/1.0
   style negotiation (section 4.2) can be used.

16 Acknowledgments

   Work on HTTP content negotiation has been done since at least 1993.
   The authors are unable to trace the origin of many of the ideas
   incorporated in this document.  Many members of the HTTP working
   group have contributed to the negotiation model in this
   specification.  The authors wish to thank the individuals who have
   commented on earlier versions of this document, including Brian
   Behlendorf, Daniel DuBois, Martin J. Duerst, Roy T. Fielding, Jim
   Gettys, Yaron Goland, Dirk van Gulik, Ted Hardie, Graham Klyne, Scott
   Lawrence, Larry Masinter, Jeffrey Mogul, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,
   Frederick G.M. Roeber, Paul Sutton, and Klaus Weide and Mark Wood.




 
RFC 2295            Transparent Content Negotiation           March 1998


17 References

   [1] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., and
       T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC
       2068, January 1997.

   [2] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and H. Frystyk, "Hypertext
       Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, May 1996.

   [3] Holtman, K., and A. Mutz, "HTTP Remote Variant Selection
       Algorithm -- RVSA/1.0", RFC 2296, March 1998.

   [4] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
       Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [5] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of Unicode and ISO
       10646", RFC 2044, October 1996.

18 Authors' Addresses

   Koen Holtman
   Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
   Postbus 513
   Kamer HG 6.57
   5600 MB Eindhoven (The Netherlands)

   EMail: koen@win.tue.nl


   Andrew H. Mutz
   Hewlett-Packard Company
   1501 Page Mill Road 3U-3
   Palo Alto CA 94304, USA

   Fax +1 415 857 4691
   EMail: mutz@hpl.hp.com
















 
RFC 2295            Transparent Content Negotiation           March 1998


19 Appendix: Example of a local variant selection algorithm

   A negotiating user agent will choose the best variant from a variant
   list with a local variant selection algorithm.  This appendix
   contains an example of such an algorithm.

   The inputs of the algorithm are a variant list from an Alternates
   header, and an agent-side configuration database, which contains