Re: comments on draft-barth-mime-sniffing

Dave Singer wrote:
>
> (It's also odd to have a spec. which bars the user agent from 'going 
> the extra mile'. Specs classically say all the things you must do to 
> be conformant, and generally can't stop you from doing more.)

Exactly!  Most modern standards and "recommendations" define what 
happens when presented with conforming input, and implicitly or 
explicitly state that non-conforming input results unspecified or 
undefined behavior (see *all* the IEEE POSIX standards, for example).  
It is an unparalleled act of hubris that this work attempts not only to 
define good behavior, but also to define *positive* behavior in the face 
of bad data.  That's just insane.  If it is critical to define the 
behavior of implementations when handed invalid input, then say that the 
implementation is required to tell the user "the input is broken"!  
Defining that an implementation will somehow cleverly deal with every 
broken piece of input is not just silly, it's impossible.

Of course, that's just my opinion.  I could be wrong (with apologies to 
Dennis Miller).

>
>
> At 23:31 -0500 6/16/09, Shane McCarron wrote:
>> This is my favorite comment in this thread, bar none!  Why, oh why 
>> are you all trying so hard to continue to support broken behavior 
>> instead of slapping down the people who insist on doing it wrong? If 
>> the user agents (go Firefox!) just refused to sniff, then no one 
>> would send nonsense content.  'cause it wouldn't work.
>> Robert O'Callahan wrote:
>>> I should also point out that so far we have had approximately zero 
>>> complaints from authors about the fact that Firefox doesn't sniff.
>>>
>>> Rob
>

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Wednesday, 17 June 2009 05:02:37 UTC