Re: Value of content negotiation? [was RE: content negotiation anti-principle]

On Wednesday 08 January 2003 05:52 pm, Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> >Maybe lack of interest, and the complications people have with content
> >negotiation hint that it's not finding a sweet spot?
>
> Has anyone tried to find a sweet spot? 

Common usage tends to gravitate to the sweet spot... in which case Apache is 
on the high end of common usage.

> I agree (since the common expectation is that an URL ending in "jpg" is a
> JPEG image), but this tight binding to a particular representation is
> exactly what negotiation was meant to address.  Must all UAs support JPEG?

No, but practically, that is becoming a non-issue for a significant fraction 
of commonly supported types.

> Would you be similarly annoyed if you had this:
>   <img src="http://foo.bar.com/foo"/>
> which returned JPG to your UA, but returned SVG to some else's?

Only if I was trying to depend on it returning a particular representation.

> Or do you mean that people don't generally care enough about the
> possibility of alternates to be bothered?

That's what seems to be the case.

Received on Wednesday, 8 January 2003 20:59:19 UTC