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

On Wed, 30 Aug 1995, Steven T. Roussey wrote:
> 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">. 

You're missing the point of Larry's suggestion, which was to inline 
*small* objects.  Linking to objects of arbitrary mime type would have 
been supported in concept since day one if <A rel="embed"...> had been 
used instead of <IMG>... 

Larry, is the overhead of mime/multipart, combined with the cid: URL 
proposal too high for this situation?  Or is there something your 
proposal provides which this wouldn't?

> 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. 

See the cid: proposal.  I've been wanting to mail around HTML docs with 
inlined images in a seamless fashion for a *long* time now. 

	Brian

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Received on Thursday, 31 August 1995 00:07:46 UTC