Re: http content type authoritative for object data?

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:
>> The thing I proposed was that the spec *allows* UAs to follow the HTTP
>> Content-Type (similarly as the content sniffing internet draft already
>> does). Do you have an opinion related to that proposal?
> 
> Ideally, the spec should mandate precisely when the HTTP Content-Type
> is to be followed, and when it should be ignored in favor of some
> other metadata.  Anything looser than that is inviting interop
> problems and will directly cause QA dollars to be wasted on something
> that potentially could have been specified more precisely earlier.

On the other hand, the spec ideally does not require to break other specs.

> If a UA is "allowed" to do something, it will hopefully discover an
> optimal algorithm to do or not do it, and this should then become part
> of the spec.  Leaving it unclear is wasteful and unnecessary.

Nobody proposed something "unclear".

The proposal was to *allow* UAs to consider the HTTP content-type as 
authoritative, just like HTML5 (via mime type sniffing spec) allows UAs 
not to sniff the type in other situations.

Best regards, Julian

Received on Thursday, 10 December 2009 14:59:20 UTC