RE: Accessible PDFs

> > Content-Disposition headers can state whether a file should be viewed
>
> These are in email MIME.  I don't remember them in HTTP,

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec19.html#sec19.5.1

 and it seems to
> me that they would go against the philosophy.

Well it seems perfectly in-tune with the philosophy for the server to say "I
think you should do this..." and the browser to follow or ignore the advice
as it sees fit.

In particular the filename portion of the header is extremely useful in
separating the filename that the stream may be saved as from the URI. This
is in accordance with http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html and
particularly useful when you have GIF files accessed by a URI like
http://example.net/images/dbImage.asp?id=48. Of course the filename can be
overridden by the user, but it can be good to give less experienced users a
default choice that will work on OSs that use file extensions to determine
file type.

I'm less sure about the value of having URIs automatically save to a file.
To my mind if the content-disposition header is "attachment" the user should
still be given the option to open it directly (unless it's of a file type
that security settings prohibit direct opening).

The decision we have taken with our CMS is to have mechanisms for setting
"attachment" in the content-disposition, but to advise our clients against
it.

Received on Tuesday, 3 December 2002 06:57:05 UTC