Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> It would also be nice if there was an easy way to get at the HTTP headers
>> associated with a response.  Maybe there is a way but I can't find it.
>
> Maybe for that, url-http is more appropriate.
> After all, there won't be any HTTL headers if the URL is not using HTTP.

Right.  How about this patch to url-http.el?

Test like this:
(setq url-http-save-headers t)
(url-retrieve-synchronously "http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot")
(setq url-http-save-headers nil)

After that url-http-headers should look like this:
(("Content-Type" . "text/xml;charset=utf-8") ("Transfer-Encoding" . "chunked") ("Connection" . "Keep-Alive") ("Keep-Alive" . "timeout=5, max=100") ("ETag" . "xRkHefoJaorPexoLfvkTcHeudUY") ("Last-Modified" . "Sat, 14 Jan 2006 18:29:23 GMT") ("Server" . "Apache") ("Date" . "Sat, 14 Jan 2006 18:30:49 GMT"))