Re: review of content type rules by IETF/HTTP community

On Aug 21, 2007, at 3:38 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

>
> On Aug 21, 2007, at 2:32 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>
>> Note that HTML5 goes out of its way to try to improve the  
>> situation, by
>> limiting the sniffing to very specific cases that browsers are being
>> forced into handling by market pressures. So HTML5, as written today,
>> stands to actually improve matters on the long term.
>
> HTML is a mark-up language -- it isn't even involved at that level
> of the architecture.  Why should I (as an implementer) have to wade
> through several pages of intense workarounds if all I am interested
> in implementing is a compliant HTML editor?  Orthogonal standards
> deserve orthogonal specs.

The sniffing behavior in HTML5 is not orthogonal to the rest of the  
spec. It depends on the loading context. <iframe src="gif-sent-with- 
text-plain-type.txt"> will have different results than <img src="gif- 
sent-with-text-plain-type.txt">. This is necessary both for  
compatibility and to minimize the scope of the content sniffing.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 23:02:29 UTC