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[Bug 7486] New: - Don't like design of content negotiation and browser "Accepts"
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http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7486

Don't like design of content negotiation and browser "Accepts"

Summary: Don't like design of content negotiation and browser
"Accepts"
Product: Apache httpd-1.3
Version: 1.3.23
Platform: All
OS/Version: All
Status: NEW
Severity: Normal
Priority: Other
Component: Modules
AssignedTo: bugs@httpd.apache.org
ReportedBy: higonnet@world.std.com


This is much more a discussion of what I think is a serious design problem than
a bug which it almost certainly is not.

Apache interprets the browser's "AcceptLanguage" as refusing a file if the
language of that file is known to the browser and that language is not in the
AcceptLanguage list. In such a case the servers sends back 406.

That seems reasonable as stated, but in practice I find it strange.

As a consumer, I interpret the presence of a language (and its rank in the
language list) as a preference. In my case a broswer had as the only language in
the list "de". The browser asked for a file which existed in both English and
French. English is defined as the default language. Since there was no file in
German the server sent back the 406. If the server had not known what the
language was (say no negotiation installed, or negotiation installed by file did
not have "en" in its name) it would have served it up.

I hope no one reading will find me sneaky, but my file names are of the form
filename.en.html and filename.fr.html (for compatiblity with file creation
software (Dreamweaver) which doesn't understand Apache content negotiation).

I could understand this behaviour in the case of incompatibility of scripts for
two languages, but it seems to me that the user has asked for a given page and
even if the user's preferebces can not be satisfied the user should be allowed
to reject the page by not reading it.

I apologize if there's a better place for making these comments...

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