Absence of Accept-Encoding

[mnot@…]

​https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#header.accept-encoding says:

A request without an Accept-Encoding header field implies that the user agent will accept any content-coding in response.

This statement confused a browser vendor I was talking to, because "accept" is misleading here; it implies that the client is capable of processing any encoding. It would be more accurate to say:

A request without an Accept-Encoding header field does not indicate the content-codings (if any) that the user agent finds acceptable.

or

A request without an Accept-Encoding header field implies that the user agent will accept any content-coding in response. Note that the user agent might not be able to process an encoding sent in response to such a request.

If we intend servers to be able to infer something from *that*, we should say so directly.

[fielding@…]

From [2084]:

(editorial) Clarify that no Accept-Encoding means that the user agent has no prefereence, not that it must implement all possible codings; addresses #424