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

On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 10:17:14 +0200, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>  
wrote:

> Magnus Kristiansen wrote:
>> It doesn't just apply to new format and old servers either. Apache does  
>> not include several common extensions in its mime mappings, as I  
>> understand it because there is a policy of only supporting  
>> IANA-registered types. Many of these are old and well-established, so  
>> there is little chance of them deciding to change their mind and  
>> register any time soon. I doubt Apache is alone, surely other web
>
> Who are "they"? Anybody can try to register a type. The registration  
> procedure is here: <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4288>.

.gz and .rar are notoriously absent, as are several Microsoft audio/video  
formats. A more recent addition is bittorrent.

Other types like .ico, .avi, .wav and flash's .swf are also unregistered,  
but have somehow found their way into the mime.types file regardless.

>> servers have their own ways to ensure not all content works as it  
>> should out of the box.
>>  The consequences are externalized to server admins to fix things on  
>> their own (e.g. with [1]) and UA implementors to make it work even when  
>> it's not fixed. I have low hopes for this problem being solved by the  
>> servers.
>>  [1]  
>> http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Properly_Configuring_Server_MIME_Types
>
> Well, at least for Apache httpd the default is *not* to send a  
> content-type response header when the type is unknown. As far as I can  
> tell, we're discussing something completely different here: servers that  
> send an incorrect type.

This does not match my tests. I removed my custom types, and as expected  
.wmv was served as text/plain. Not just displayed as text, an explicit  
content-type header.

-- 
Magnus Kristiansen
"Don't worry; the Universe IS out to get you."

Received on Saturday, 25 August 2007 11:55:53 UTC