If I can't establish a TLS connection, I can't get at the HTTP that's flowing over the encrypted pipe. It's pointless to split up HTTP and TLS/SSL when they wer

If I can't establish a TLS connection, I can't get at the HTTP that's flowing over the encrypted pipe. It's pointless to split up HTTP and TLS/SSL when they were always deployed in lockstep anyway (unless you were happy with plaintext, or BYO encryption). If we imagine the HTTP+plaintext at one extreme, and HTTP+TLSv$latest at the other, a whole bunch of specs in the middle have effectively died out because nobody deploys them any more. Therefore, it's unfair to claim that "HTTP-over-TLS works fine across all versions of HTTP" (because it doesn't, unless you also support modern crypto), or that "HTTPS has been supported by browsers since 1994" (because the 1994 HTTPS is not even partly forwards-compatible with the 2022 HTTPS).