[spec] When may clients begin processing responses?

[lincoln auster]

Hi,

> The transaction sequence in section 1.1 seems to read chronologically,
> which would mean clients are not permitted to handle any of the
> response until the server closes the connection.

I hadn't noticed that in my reading: it does look like incremental
processing/rendering might be strictly disallowed with response body
handling only allowed to occur after the close_notify.

> Would it make sense to clarify this in the spec, maybe by changing
> the last line of section 1.1 or by adding a note to section 3.4?

What's the current informal stance on clients just doing this given the
ambiguity in the spec? It seems a bit odd to me that the spec would
forbid this class of client optimizations: reading the whole of a
response into memory for processing feels like it could be a fairly
wasteful operation[0].

Anyway, I'm just seconding Scot's question and asking for some broader
clarification!

--
lincoln auster
     they/them

0: I also think it would lead to a more complex implementation in
   functional(-ish) languages where we can map a rendering subroutine
   over a TLS stream regardless of the completion of that stream, but
   don't quote me on that :).