Jim Higson wrote:
I've just noticed that with 1.4 raw text isn't sent compressed.
A quick test confirms that it *is* sent compressed when requested by the user agent, just as other page views are. For it to behave otherwise would be surprising, since the default LocalSettings.php engages compression buffering before the check for the 'action' parameter is made.
You can test this by doing for instance 'telnet en.wikipedia.org 80' and pasting in this request:
GET /w/index.php?title=Cornell_Box&action=raw HTTP/1.1 Host: en.wikipedia.org Accept-Encoding: gzip
You'll get back some lovely binary garbage. Try it again without the Accept-Encoding header, and you see lovely plain text.
If you've got a problem on your own site, check that your PHP installation is configured with zlib support and that you haven't removed the compression line from your LocalSettings.php.
Since wikitext is already stored gzipped, would it make sense to offer content-type gzip instead of decompressing on the server?
Wikitext in old revisions may be stored gzipped sometimes, if so configured, but not always. Wikitext in current revisions is never stored gzipped (up through 1.4, anyway). Wikitext in old revisions may be part of a combined chunk of multiple revisions all compressed together.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)