The existing discussion of HTTP Response codes in the -05 draft does
not provide any useful information about the handling of response
codes or the reporting of human readable error situation information.
== Proposal ==
(replace the existing section 5.5 with)
5.5 HTTP Response codes
HTTP defines different classes of responses that indicate the sucess
or failure of an operation. HTTP status codes of the form 2xx signal
a successful request. HTTP status codes of the form 3xx signal that
the request should be redirected to a different specified endpoint.
HTTP status codes of the form 4xx signal that an incorrect request has
been received by the client. HTTP status codes of the form 5xx signal
that the server was unable to successfully complete the operation.
APP clients SHOULD be capable of following the redirections specified
by the 301 "Moved Permanently", 302 "Found", 304 "Not Modified", 305
"Use Proxy", and 307 "Temporary Redirection" status codes. APP
implementations MAY choose to support the 303 "See Other" status code.
HTTP responses specifying 4xx or 5xx status codes MUST include an
entity containing a human readable, natural language explanation of
the error situation. A standardized format for reporting the error
situation is not defined.
This is a total waste of space. HTTP is a normative requirement of
Atom or it isn't. If it is, then the above paragraphs are both
insufficient to describe error handling and wrong in its selection
of SHOULD over MUST -- Atom cannot change the requirements of HTTP.
If it isn't, then including any text about HTTP is misinformation,
because HTTP interaction is already standardized elsewhere.
....Roy
