Re: bad-idea-of-the-day: Inline data as URL scheme?

On Wed, 30 Aug 1995, Larry Masinter wrote:

> I've noted from time to time (and been asked to help with more
> locally) a request to embed some other (small) media type inline.
> I was looking for a way that this would work for VRML and PDF as well
> as HTML.
> 
> I've been thinking that this might be a new kind of URL scheme. It is
> most like 'immediate addressing', i.e., you actually stick the value
> into the address field. What kind of data? Well, perhaps any MIME
> type, suitably encoded. For example:

I like a URL like <OBJECT SCR="protocol://pathname.extension"> Then use 
standard MIME extentions to get at the actual data type (and the URL to 
get the data). Note that <OBJECT SCR="http://www.abc.com/cool.gif"> is 
the same as <IMG SRC="http://www.abc.com/cool.gif">. 

I'd also like to see 'inline' as a protocol. Then the HTTP server sends a 
MIME/mutipart message with an HTML part, and GIF parts etc, and the HTML 
gets the inlined data from urls like <OBJECT SCR="inline:cool.gif">. Then 
they can be sent as a single doc. 

This is handy if you want to eMail a doc with its inlined objects in the 
same message (I'm trying to get Netscape to do this for a mail program 
I'm writing. They send it this way, and I can understand it.)

Also with an OBJECT tag then I can send any inlined data type (like any 
OpenDoc based type). This would be really cool...

-steve-

Received on Wednesday, 30 August 1995 18:10:41 UTC