Re: Inlined image format

John Ellson (hotsand!ellson)
Tue, 25 Jan 94 14:45:36 EST


> From: jonm@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Jon E. Mittelhauser)
>
> The advantage to using Gifs, however, is that the document will be viewable
> in all browsers that support inlined images. If you add a new format, the
> document will only be viewble by a very limited set of people...
>
> At least in terms of Mosaic, we have currently only agreed to support gifs
> and xbms on all three platforms...

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why does the capability of the
browser affect the viewability of a document? Why do all the browsers
have to have the same capabilities?

If a browser is extended to view TIFFs inline why can't I indicate
that in the .mailcap? If the browser is not capable of viewing inline
then the .mailcap can direct the image to an external viewer.

Beyond TIFFs, what I'd really like to see is an inline window that external
viewers can use for their display so that we can have inline movies,
inline shells, inline audio control panels... all without hard-coded
extensions to the browser.

John Ellson
AT&T Bell Labs