From: Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net>
To: 18812@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#18812: 24.4; url.el user agent does not include Emacs version
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 19:17:48 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87oat1e0pv.fsf@violet.siamics.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m2zjcld1es.fsf@lifelogs.com> (Ted Zlatanov's message of "Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:48:11 -0400")
>>>>> "TZ" == Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>>>>> On Thu, 23 Oct 2014 21:19:21 -0400 Stefan Monnier wrote:
PH> The url.el functions for making HTTP requests set the User-Agent
PH> header to "URL/Emacs" which is not very descriptive. It would be
PH> helpful to include the Emacs version, at least.
SM> Other people feel like it's already too descriptive. Why should
SM> all Emacs users constantly tell the whole world exactly which Emacs
SM> version they're running?
TZ> Web browsers do. It helps web developers and is not particularly
TZ> sensitive if only the major.minor version is used (without too much
TZ> detail).
Web browsers (and HTTP/HTTPS clients in general) also provide a
way for the user to override the default User-Agent: value, and
I believe that Emacs should allow for that, too.
While somewhat tangential to the problem as reported, some of
the issues I’ve seen with the default User-Agent: settings are:
• Lynx’ default User-Agent: includes ‘libwww’ as a substring;
apparently, some Web sites mistake that for the well-known
Perl library of the same name, and thus reject the requests;
the solution is to either manually remove the respective
stanza, or to disable User-Agent: altogether;
• other sites are known to disallow HTTP requests /without/
User-Agent:, however;
• GNU Wget default identification is also not unknown to be
rejected; per my experience, using something like “tegW/1.15”
instead (via --user-agent=) tends to resolve the issue;
• moreover, some sites actually serve different content
depending on User-Agent:, – apparently for “SEO” purposes; for
instance, a PDF file is served for a request from a party
identifying itself as a search engine, while regular browsers
get a Web page with a (presumably non-free) JavaScript-based
PDF reader set up for that file instead.
--
FSF associate member #7257 http://boycottsystemd.org/ … 3013 B6A0 230E 334A
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-10-24 19:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-10-23 21:32 bug#18812: 24.4; url.el user agent does not include Emacs version Phil Hagelberg
2014-10-24 1:19 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-10-24 13:48 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-10-24 16:07 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-10-24 16:21 ` Phil Hagelberg
2014-10-24 18:51 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-10-24 20:37 ` Phil Hagelberg
2014-10-24 19:17 ` Ivan Shmakov [this message]
2015-12-25 19:26 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=87oat1e0pv.fsf@violet.siamics.net \
--to=ivan@siamics.net \
--cc=18812@debbugs.gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.