Re: make standard If-Modified-Since headers

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:22:35 +0100 Thien-Thi Nguyen <address@hidden> wrote: 

TN> () Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>
TN> () Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:08:43 -0600

TN>    to ask for opinions to make sure existing code (especially
TN>    parsers that might depend on the old format) doesn't break.

TN> If there's a newer RFC, code relying on the old RFC will break
TN> when trying to interoperate elsewhere (outside Emacs), unless
TN> their maintainers can be alerted sooner by Emacs moving to the
TN> newer RFC.  If it MUST be broken sooner or later, better sooner.

The newer RFC (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html, section 19.3 and
others) specifies the older format (RFC 850 HTTP dates, which have
2-digit years) as acceptable input, but in practice years like 2008 are
often not handled properly in the 2-digit format, and there's no need to
use RFC 850 dates today.  

I am not aware of anything inside Emacs that cares about the
url-get-normalized-date format.

I think this is a very harmless bug fix that should go in the pretest as
well.  If anyone has a reason to stick with RFC 850 dates, please let me
know.

Ted