Re: LINK TYPE=override/type

On 23 Jan 98, Ian Graham wrote:

> It does not make sense to distribute fully-functioning multimedia via 
> protocols not designed to support multimedia --  we should expect some things
> to break, such as typing, under these circumstances.

What about using the file: protocol for pages over a local network or off 
a CD-ROM?

(CDs with HTML and various multimedia objects are appealing to many
electronic publishers for obvious reasons: you can reach more people who
can use their own browsers to view the work rather than supply
proprietary viewers for a limited numbers of platforms and hope they
work on machines in the future...)

> [..]
> I see two issues being discussed -- determining the correct MIME type, and
> deciding how to handle or view that type.   TYPE cannot do both.  If you 

No. The user agent handles a specific type in a certain way. It is not 
always possible for the agent to know what type a file is (either because 
of the protocol or because of a misconfigured server). So using the TYPE 
attribute tells the agent to treat the resource as a certain type... it 
tells it what type it is, and the agent handles it as such. (It doesn't 
need to know the "correct" MIME type; it only needs to know a MIME type 
that allows it to handle the document in the way the author desires.)

> It is true that HTTP  server implementations limit user-control of 
> typing -- but that is no reason to discard HTTP's ability to specify this
> information.  Some of the current arguments should perhaps be raised in

It's not being discarded. But there are cases where the server should be 
overidden.

Rob
 

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Received on Saturday, 24 January 1998 01:21:13 UTC