Re: File Types

>                  Unfortunately the trend is in the opposite direction,
>with implementations bastardizing mailcap semantics enough that you end
>up needing to have a separate mailcap file for different applications,
>which kind of defeats the whole point.

        Hear here!   Indeed.

>This becomes less important by virtue of the decision to not require
>newline canonicalization in HTTP, however, but instead requiring
>recognition of common noncanonical formats.

        I must have been asleep again.   But I'm glad I posed the
question,  if only to have learned this bit.   When and where was
this decision made?   I don't think I agree at all.   While the common
de-facto canonicalizations for textual data are close enough that we can
fudge it,  it would be foolish to assume that we'll be so lucky next time.
There are more canonicalizations than just the two:  text -vs- binary.
Personally I can only think of three:  text, binary, and record,
but I won't presume that there aren't others.

        So I'm looking for a place to stick the canonicalization info.
I'd like for it to be closely associated with the MIME type info,
but the two do not always go hand-in-hand.   Now,  if somone would
like to propose a requirement that canonicalization and MIME typing
be bound,  ...  well,  that's another story.

--
Rick Troth <troth@ua1vm.ua.edu>, Houston, Texas, USA
http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~troth/

Received on Monday, 17 July 1995 17:38:43 UTC