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Bradley D. Thornton Bradley at NorthTech.US
Sun Mar 1 08:22:22 GMT 2020
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ``` On 2/28/2020 2:04 AM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote: > On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 11:07 AM Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote: > > Why is a numeric status code so bad? Yes, the rest of the protocol is > > English centric (MIME types; left-to-right, UTF-8). It just seems that > > using words (regardless of language) is just complexity for its own sake. > > > Why did people use `/etc/hosts` files before DNS was invented? Why do > we have `/etc/services`? Why do we have `O_READ`? Why do we have > `chmod +x`? > > Because numbers are hard to remember, and say nothing to a person that > doesn't know the spec by heart. (For example although I do a lot of > HTTP related work with regard to routing and such, I always don't > remember which of the 4-5 HTTP redirect codes says "temporary redirect > but keep the same method" as "opposed to temporary redirect but switch > to `GET`".) > Well, section 1.3.2 of the Gemini spec-spec says two digit codes, butsingle (first digit) is all that is required. So, a 2, a 20, and a 21are all success and there's no ambituity as to anything occuring at thefirst digit level, it's just more gravy with the second digit. I do fail to see why what appears to me to be a whole lot of work toimplement what you suggest, especially considering that most serverswill invariably choose to implement their own custom handlers forstatus/error codes, much like one does in Apache so the server operatorthemselves gets to choose what content to deliver as a result of a 404. So there would be added framework for human readable, non-numeric statuscodes (I would rather read the numerical codes in my logfiles), and thenas Gemini matures and stabilizes, devs will build frameworks so theserver operators can and will devlop custom pages for the status codesanyway. This seems, at best, somewhat redundant to me (ultimately). A 5 (or 50) might not provide as complete a picture as one would like,yet it's optional to serve the full digit code and still unambiguouswith respect of what's going on at the baseline - a permanent falure. A 51 though, perhaps the most common user facing state where errors areencountered, will certainly eventually be accommodated by some cleverlittle remark intended to amuse the user who just asked for somethingthat isn't there. Reinforcing my suggestion that the server operatorsare going to want the devs to enable them to deliver cute littlemessages during such fashion faux pas'. That's just kinda what I was pondering while reading the exchange. -- Bradley D. ThorntonManager Network Serviceshttp://NorthTech.USTEL: +1.310.421.8268