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So because people are occasionally confused by parameters with X- names, we fix this by effectively doubling the number of permutations of names they have to tr

• robinhouston 15y ago
  I wonder where you got the idea that the rationale for this proposal is “because people are occasionally confused”. The actual rationale is much more reasonable: The primary problem with the "X-" convention is that non-standard parameters have a tendency to leak into the protected space of standard parameters (whether de jure or de facto), thus introducing the need for migration from the "X-" name to the standard name. Migration, in turn, introduces interoperability issues (and sometimes security issues) because older implementations will support only the "X-" name and newer implementations might support only the standard name. To preserve interoperability, newer implementations simply support the "X-" name forever, which means that the non-standard name has become a de facto standard (thus obviating the need for segregation of the name space into "standard" and "non-standard" areas in the first place). Also there is nothing in this proposal that would “effectively [double] the number of permutations of names they have to try”. Look at the Recommendations for Protocol Designers in section 4.
  • pixelcort 15y ago
    It's interesting to consider the parallels between this and CSS vendor prefixes.