>SW: In general, is the MIME type redundant information? Can >it always be derived from the content (e.g., what about >mixed content that might validate in different ways)? > >Reply: No, one cannot always derive a unique media type by >looking at the content. Just a couple of examples while I'm thinking of them: * Our Corporate Technical Memory contains a complete description of itself, so we have instances where the source for a Perl program should be transmitted as MIME text/plain so that neither the server nor the browser should interpret the data as a Perl program. * Tutorials need to transmit data in forms other than their standard interpretation -- for example, an SVG tutorial should transmit the SVG files to be examined by the student as text/plain (or possibly text/xml). Having the browser interpret that data as SVG defeats the whole purpose of the tutorial. <resume lurking mode...> =============================================== Mark Leighton Fisher fisherm@tce.com Thomson multimedia, Inc. Indianapolis IN "Display some adaptability." -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_Received on Thursday, 28 February 2002 08:59:09 GMT
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