HTTP a nicely documented protocol?

"It sure beats the people who would use the LPD printing or the SMTP email protocol for everything before hand"

You do realize that HTTP basically *is* SMTP: command line (just "GET" vs. "MAIL FROM", capitals included), CRLF separated headers, blank (CRLF line) then body? They just forgot the last line with a single dot (and are a bit more forgiving about what goes in the body, an attitude which turned around and has bitten us in the ass ever since (go read about "Content-Length" in the relevant RFCs if you don't know what I mean).

Of course, a multitude of contraptions have been bolted-on afterwards, some which look like wings, other like corkscrews. Flow control. A streaming (100 CONTINUE et al) protocol tacked upon a packet protocol (the original HTTP/1.0, akin to SMTP) with a rudimentary flow control, running over a much more sophisticated streaming protocol (TCP). No. If HTTP looks nice to you it's because you didn't look too much into it.

Actually it's chewing gum and bailing wire.

On a more general (and more on-topic) note: don't read in that a negative attitude towards Tent itself: I think it's a nifty idea, worth to take off -- I serioulsy hope it does (and having looked at their Git repo, the one thing I most wish would be a plain language description of the protocol they envision, rather than a fuzzball of Ruby and PostgreSQL. But I just might be blind -- or that may be in the making).