- From: Brian Smith <brian@briansmith.org>
- Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 14:22:41 -0500
- To: "'Mark Nottingham'" <mnot@mnot.net>, "'HTTP Working Group'" <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
Mark Nottingham wrote: > The text in question is in p3 section 3.2.1: > > If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, > > the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of > > its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify > > the resource. If the media type remains unknown, the recipient > > SHOULD treat it as type "application/octet-stream". "If and only if...MAY..." is not the same as "MUST NOT ... if not". That is, the above statement doesn't forbid an implementation from doing content sniffing since it isn't a MUST NOT requirement. > 1) remove the text "If and only if the media type is not given by a > Content-Type field", leaving the specification of the sniffing > algorithm to a separate document (possibly with some further > constraints to discourage sniffing unless it's controlled, but this > would be necessarily vague), or +1. How applications interpret content is not really relevant as far as the protocol is concerned. The HTTP specification should make it clear what Content-Type represents and let applications decide whether (and how) to make use of it. - Brian
Received on Monday, 1 June 2009 19:23:16 UTC