Re: Handling of MIME types for markup?

> As a simple fix, I've released lq-nsgmls 1.3.4.4 [1] with Accept: */* in
> place of Accept: text/*.
> 
> [1] http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/src/lq-sp-1.3.4.4.tar.gz

Ouch.  In the absence of further discussion, I had meant to reply
earlier on this.

IIRC, Accept: */* is James Clark's original.  I believe it is wrong

I accept your (and Terje's) view that my fix is also wrong - for the
reasons we have already discussed.  If we use an Accept header, we
need to give further thought to its value.

As a fallback, we should drop it altogether.  In terms of HTTP, this
is clearly correct:
  *  Accept: */* says "we accept absolutely everything" - which we most
     certainly don't.  Accept: */* is appropriate to a browser with a
     default action (eg save to disc or prompt user), but not to SP.
  *  If we drop the Accept: altogether, we are saying instead that we 
     don't support this (optional) aspect of HTTP.  In the absence of
     a complete solution, this is indeed true.

Can I suggest we just drop it?

-- 
Nick Kew

Received on Thursday, 19 April 2001 15:50:26 UTC