Re: "treat this as text" option (a CUAP)

Aaron Swartz wrote:
> 
> On Friday, September 7, 2001, at 11:44  AM, Lynn Andrea Stein wrote:
> 
> > I really wish that browsers would give me the option of telling it that
> > a particular mime type represents just plain text, i.e., that it should
> > be viewed using the browser itself rather than an external application.
> 
> I assume you mean this on the client side because on the server
> side you can just send it as text/plain. On the client side I
> suppose you can save it as a text file and open it.

Yes, but how often does that cause folks to just not bother?

I encouraged Lynn to send this request here because
the MIME specs say[1] that unknown text/* types should be
treated as text/plain, but web browsers don't do that.

So I'd like this noted as a Common User Agent Problem.
	http://www.w3.org/TR/cuap

> What's the use case you're envisioning?

The W3C web site serves up .rdf files as text/xml; they
should show up like text/plain by default; or at least:
there should be an option...

[1]

[[[
4.1.4. Unrecognized Subtypes 

Unrecognized subtypes of "text" should be treated as subtype "plain" as
long as the
MIME implementation knows how to handle the charset.
]]]

--        (MIME) Part Two: Media Types
  Request for Comments: 2046
  November 1996
  http://www.nacs.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/MIME/2046/rfc2046.html

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Friday, 7 September 2001 14:26:06 UTC