Re: errors don't come back as Content-type: text/html

Eric W. Sink (eric@spyglass.com)
Wed, 13 Jul 1994 13:58:22 -0600

> Not sure if this was best. One annoying feature of Mosaic
>is that it presumes things are HTML unless otherwise explicitly labeled.
>Retrieve any number of plain-text items that aren't clearly labeled,
>and blech! Runtogethernonsense. Maybe there should be some fall-back
>processing when there's no content-type record. It shouldn't be a really
>compilcated matter for Lynx, Mosaic, and friends to eyeball the first
>line and look for the canonical "<html>" or other SGML-ish strings.
>("<plaintext>" being a special case, of course) Maybe this feature
>should be in the WWW Library code?

(Rick, I think I just sent you a bogus message, sorry).

I agree. I actually do not like Mosaic's behavior of assuming text/html
unless told otherwise. This gives lovely behavior when trying to access
something like a file compressed with gzip. XMosaic stuffs a bunch of
gibberish onto the screen.

I think this has been discussed before. Didn't it go like this? :

1. Obey the HTTP 1.0 content type
2. Otherwise, check the suffix on the file and guess
3. Otherwise, call HTSaveLocally (or equiv) to just put the
file on local disk.

Eric W. Sink, Software Engineer -- eric@spyglass.com 217-355-6000 ext 237
All opinions expressed are mine, and may not be those of my employer.
"Only academic people put cheese in their pocket."
-SW, 24 May 1994