From: "Jerry Baker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 10:32 PM
> Ryan Bloom wrote:
> >
> > You know what's really funny? Every time this has been brought up before,
> > the Apache core has always said, if you want to have gzip'ed data, then
> > gzip it when you create the site. That way, your computer doesn't have to
> > waste cycles while it is trying hard to serve requests. I personally stand by
> > that statement. If you want to use gzip, then zip your data before putting it
> > on-line. That doesn't help generated pages, but perl can already do gzip, as
> > can PHP.
>
> Gzip'ing html into files is a hopeless waste of disk space and clutter.
> That means for every file you have to have a gzipped and non-gzipped
> version for browsers that cannot handle it. Then you have to configure
> Apache to check for and serve the proper file to the proper browser. It
> makes Web page maintenance a severe PITA as you have to re-gzip a doc
> everytime it is modified and upload both files.
Interesting point for gzip authors in general ... if it won't save a second
network packet - it is _not_ worth it (think favicon.ico, icon.gif (or any
self-compressed format), or littleframeset.html).
Probably always need to set some 'threshhold' of 8kb (minimally) that the
webserver absolutely ignores, and some include or exclude list by mime type
to describe the value of further compression. Even if the file is requested
to be gzip'ped, and it's targetted for the cache, set a flag at the end that
says "hey, I saved -2% on this file, don't let us do _that_ again! File foo
shouldn't be cached", and then internally add foo to the excludes list for
any gzip filter.
Bill
