Bug#679522: apache2.2-common: Apache Common and Combined definition Vs. documentation disparity

[Stefan Fritsch <sf@sfritsch.de>]

On Friday 29 June 2012, Ryan Jones wrote:
> The difference between them being that where in the vanilla version
> we have ‘%b’ whilst in the apache2.2-common version we have ’%O’.
> Whilst the data they return is similar they are not the same.

%O has the advantage that it logs something reasonable for partial 
requests, while %b always logs the size of the file, even if only a 
part has been requested. Why is the difference a problem? I guess that 
log analyzing software may expect %b, but what exactly is the 
resulting problem? After all, %O is just more exact than %b.