I think he's saying that you could potentially have the prioritized output without "HTTP2 know[ing] about progressive JPEGs". E.g. specifying "these layers are

I think he's saying that you could potentially have the prioritized output without "HTTP2 know[ing] about progressive JPEGs". E.g. specifying "these layers are high priority" versus "the first n bytes of this stream are high priority": The first would be a layering violation, but I don't see any reason the second would be (not saying anything about its practicality). Now obviously the protocol would need to support the second (at least to use it in the context we're talking about), but I read the GP as using "API" figuratively enough to encompass this.