Re: Do you understand this?

[Nic Ferrier <nferrier@tapsellferrier.co.uk>]

"Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:

>            Accept: text/plain; 
>                    q=0.5, text/html, text/x-dvi; 
>                    q=0.8, text/x-c
>
>     If sent in an HTTP request for a resource /fred the above Accept
>     headers tells the server that the user will ideally accept /fred as an
>     HTML document or a text/x-c document. 
>
> I do not understand.
>
> Am I right in formatting the statement such that semi-colons have a
> higher precedence than commas?

Yes. A media-type is a major-type / minor-type plus an optional list
of parameters which are separated from themselves and the major/minor
type info by semi-colons, eg:

   text/plain; charset=utf-8; otherparam=xxx; q=0.5



> If that is the case, then the above sequency looks to me to favor
>
>   * text/x-c                as the highest priority;
>
>   * text/html, text/x-dvi   both equally as the second priorty; and, 
>
>   * text/plain              as the third, lowest priority.

No quality specifier indicates priority 1.0 (the highest).


> But I do not know anything about this and would like to be told more.
>
> An alternative formatting is that semi-colons precede q settings, and
> that if a format lacks a q setting, it has the highest priority.
>
> Thus, the above could be formatted like this
>
>        Accept: text/plain; q=0.5, 
>                text/html, text/x-dvi; q=0.8, 
>                text/x-c

My original was cut straight out of rfc2616 and is formatted badly (I
think to empahsise the syntax over any arbritary textual ordering).

A more sensible textual rendering would look like this:

        Accept: text/plain; q=0.5, 
                text/html; q=1.0, 
                text/x-dvi; q=0.8, 
                text/x-c; q=1.0

Hope that's clearer.