Transfer coding for compression won't work

[svgeesus]

Originally raised by Martin Thomson

The use of transfer coding for compression won't work in most cases. Transfer coding isn't available in all versions of HTTP.

[garretrieger]

The spec states the the server must support either Content-Encoding or Transfer-Encoding. This should allow it to work with HTTP/1.1 through HTTP/3 servers. Realistically I would expect most implementations to use content-encoding.

[garretrieger]

Maybe a better way would be to always require "Content-Encoding" and have "Transfer-Encoding" be optional since a server that only supports "Transfer-Encoding" doesn't make much sense.

[svgeesus]

I agree that specifying Content-Encoding in the spec would be best. Must admit I was unaware that Transfer Coding had been dropped.

@martinthomson does that sound good to you?

[martinthomson]

Yeah, I would just drop any mention of transfer coding.