Re: Handling of MIME types for markup?

On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Nick Kew wrote:

> > As a simple fix, I've released lq-nsgmls 1.3.4.4 [1] with Accept: */* in
> > place of Accept: text/*.
> >
> > [1] http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/src/lq-sp-1.3.4.4.tar.gz
>
> Ouch.  In the absence of further discussion, I had meant to reply
> earlier on this.
>
> IIRC, Accept: */* is James Clark's original.  I believe it is wrong
>
> I accept your (and Terje's) view that my fix is also wrong - for the
> reasons we have already discussed.  If we use an Accept header, we
> need to give further thought to its value.
>
> As a fallback, we should drop it altogether.  In terms of HTTP, this
> is clearly correct:
>   *  Accept: */* says "we accept absolutely everything" - which we most
>      certainly don't.  Accept: */* is appropriate to a browser with a
>      default action (eg save to disc or prompt user), but not to SP.
>   *  If we drop the Accept: altogether, we are saying instead that we
>      don't support this (optional) aspect of HTTP.  In the absence of
>      a complete solution, this is indeed true.
>
> Can I suggest we just drop it?

It's dropped in the just-released lq-nsgmls 1.3.4.5.

-- 
Liam Quinn

Received on Sunday, 29 April 2001 17:04:11 UTC