Mime Type as metadata and why it's in my HTML document in the first place.

Is is just me or are Mime Types metadata intrinsic to the object they are 
describing?  Personally I don't know why I should be able to take a CSS file 
(text/css) and say... hey I want you to interpret this as a image/png.  Why 
is that even possible.  Shouldn't the mime type be implicit when you get the 
actual data.  Here I'd like this resource at this URI... what's it's mime 
type please.  The only, only possible place where it should be possible to 
specify something's metadata (mimetype or otherwise) is when that metadata 
is attached to the actual content as in inline script or styling 
information.

Also I wouldn't imagine specifying explicit mime types would play very 
nicely with content negotiation.  I say I want a resource at this URI.  If 
I'm specifying the mime type I'm not leaving the option to accept other mime 
types.

Orion Adrian

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Received on Thursday, 12 February 2004 01:34:48 UTC