Re: Starting the ietf-xml-mime mailing list

[Chris Lilley <chris@xxxxxx>]

Murray Altheim wrote:
> I don't believe that
> resorting to file extensions can possibly be the way of the future.

I agree that it should not be the way of the future, but there is some
evidence that implementors are moving in this direction. Try serving up
a PNG file labelled as image/png but with a .gif extension to a popular
browser and see what happens ;-(

Similarly, try serving up an XML file with a .txt extension as
text/plain and some browsers will still complain "unable to display XML
file with stylesheet" and faiul to display it as text - they are
sniffing in the content. 

This is, apparently, because of the amount of unlabelled or mislabelled
content which already exists.

>  We all need a better alternative.

Yes. We also need one fairly quickly (all done and dusted in, lets say,
three months tops) otherwise whatever solution is proposed will merely
be a good idea, but too late.

--
Chris