Why most API paginations do not rely on HTTP Range header?

Question

I've searched a lot but I can't find a good answer to this question. Being a HATEOAS aficionado, I would think that this header fit perfectly:

    Range: item=1-20/100

In the HTTP spec, I don't understand some "contradictions": The range unit can accept "other-range-unit"...

  range-unit       = bytes-unit | other-range-unit
  bytes-unit       = "bytes"
  other-range-unit = token

... yet the spec is later explicit:

The only range unit defined by HTTP/1.1 is "bytes". HTTP/1.1 implementations MAY ignore ranges specified using other units.

Finally the spec ends with this statement:

HTTP/1.1 has been designed to allow implementations of applications that do not depend on knowledge of ranges.

• Is any other unit than byte allowed ?
• If HTTP/1.1 was designed to allow app to not depend on range, what are the real drawback about relying on it for an API ?

NB: I don't care about "browsability".

Answer 1

Here the answers that I gently borrowed from this question thanks to @ptidel: Content-Range header - allowed units?.

First, custom units are proposed in this draft HTTP/1.1, part 5: Range Requests and Partial Responses

Second, there is a subtle difference, the first statement has been made for parsing purpose

    range-unit       = bytes-unit | other-range-unit
    bytes-unit       = "bytes"
    other-range-unit = token

While the second statement has been made for producing HTTP request.

Finally, the whole comment from Ferenc Mihaly summarizes perfectly the situation:

I conform to the HTTP spec when I'm sending [a custom range unit] and they conform to HTTP when they ignore it

WebDAV uses HTTP extensions correctly, IMO, but rarely works over the Internet for exactly this reason

Answer 2

Most of the times you don't want to show all of your items by default. With ?p=2 style pages it's ok to reserve root / for first page. With "Range" header it would be strange behavior. HTTP became overbloated long time ago so I wouldn't recommend to accept every its headers as Truth.