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

Robert Burns wrote:
>> 1) Where's the advantage over "application/octet-stream"?
> 
> The advantage is that UAs are not supposed to sniff for content when the 
> content is delivered with a MIME type from the server that's supposed to 
> be treated as authoritative. Sending 'unknown', could be defined by RFC 
> and IANA as meaning specifically the same as not sending a content-type 
> header at all.

Understood. But that requires changes in the UAs. How exactly is this 
better compared to installing fixes for Apache?

>> 2) You may want to look at 
>> <http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=13986#c55>.
> 
> Yes, I did. In fact I cited it in my message. My comments were drawn 
> substantially from reading the comments in that bug. It sounds like 
> Apache does not want to fix the bug even though Boris long-ago submitted 
> a patch. Using a IANA registered 'unknown' MIME type would accomplish 
> the same thing (as long as the servers could be configured and 
> pre-configured with 'DefaultType unknnown'.

No, I meant comment #55 in that bug: It's going to be fixed soon. See 
also 
<http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/httpd-dev/200708.mbox/%3cDD9034EC-D3F4-4AF7-8AC1-8666A3B94C32@gbiv.com%3e>.

What's not clear yet if and when that change will make it into the 2.0.* 
and/or 2.2.* releases.

Best regards, Julian

Received on Sunday, 26 August 2007 20:32:43 UTC