Re: HTTP problem or Mosaic problem?

Larry Masinter (masinter@parc.xerox.com)
Tue, 14 Jun 1994 23:34:03 PDT


> we have developed and released the CMPlayer
> which plays MPEG movies (both audio and video) across a network.
> We are interested in interfacing the CMPlayer with NCSA Mosaic. In
> some of the preliminary work, we've studied HTTP and, of course,
> surveyed similar efforts across the Internet.

One way to get a web client to launch something that then deals
asynchronously with an information source is to do it with new MIME
types:

* create a new mime type, e.g.,

application/x-cmplayer-connection

and define it as, for example, an ascii text file with, for example,
a URL in it.

* modify CMPlayer so that it takes a URL
You might want to restrict this, to, say, gopher: URLs, just
to keep the implementation simple.
* change your mailcap so that application/x-cmplayer-connection
will launch CMPlayer
* Have the link to the MPEG movie return the URL of the movie as
application/x-cmplayer-connection

That is, don't expect your web browser to be asynchronous, just have it
launch another application which is.

I think a similar setup is useful for allowing someone to open up a
VAT or NV multi-cast session via the web: have the definition for
application/x-mcast-session
be `a text file with a list of address/port descriptions for multicast
audio and video'.

This adds a level of indirection, but allows you to use current
browsers without recompiling and fairly minimal reconfiguration.