Re: [Widgets] Manifest format

On Oct 09, 2007, at 15:39, Jon Ferraiolo wrote:
> First, should there be a manifest file that lists the contents of  
> the ZIP package? Let's assume the answer is yes. Then, you probably  
> want to have an attribute such as 'type' that defines the MIME type  
> of each particular file such as you describe below. My personal  
> opinion is that it is always better to KISS, which translates into  
> standards groups holding a ruthless sword that battles against  
> feature creep of non-critical features, and in my mind manifest  
> files are non-critical in many common workflows because the ZIP  
> file itself has a directory and because the most common payload  
> format, HTML, works on the Web very well without manifest files. My  
> pragmatic proposal would be to define the file format for the  
> manifest and define a standard location and name for the manifest  
> within the package, but make it optional. In other words, manifests  
> are not required but if present must conform to the spec. One more  
> thing. If possible, to accelerate time to market and industry  
> adopton, I would push the manifest file out of version 1.0, but  
> have the 1.0 specification state reserve a future location for the  
> manifest file.

I'm with Jon on this one; I think it's a useful feature in some  
circumstances but I'm not convinced that it makes the 80/20 mark. I'd  
be happier with a promise to push a v2.0 out quickly with that  
feature included (and supporting content encoding as well as type).

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/
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