An MGET proposal for HTTP

ts (decoux@moulon.inra.fr)
Wed, 2 Nov 1994 13:50:34 +0100

> Er, actually, lots of Lynx clients send "image/gif" in the Accept:
> field, depending how the mailcap file is configured. The inclusion of
> "image/gif" absolutely does not tell you that a viewer can display
> inlined images, nor does its absence tell you a viewer cannot do so.
> Somebody may actually make a client that (gasp!) realizes that if you
> send */* in an Accept: field there is no point in sending anything
> else unless there are some additional values.

I'm not really sure, I'm not a specialist of Lynx (I prefer "www" :-)) but
apparently, without mailcap Lynx is like www :
* when it run in an xterm it send "image/gif", "application/postscript" ...
* otherwise it don't send these header lines.

I want to know :

1) Why Lynx, Mosaic, Netscape, www ... send always a field "Accept:
image/gif" in the first request, even if the user don't want receive a GIF
image.

2) why, in the example of "MGET", in the first request there is only
"text/html; text/plain" and then a request with "image/gif". For me there
is no negociation between the server and the client. Perhaps it's better to
make the choice of Chimera and send "Accept: */*"

3) why Netscape never send a field "Accept: application/postscript" even
if the user want receive a PostScript document.

I've the same problem, with the same CGI script, it can send a PostScript
document or a document HTML. This script must send systematically a
PostScript document or it must check the header line ?

Guy Decoux

p.s. it's more important, for me, to receive a header line
"Accept-Language", and this is also an user choice (I want receive french
documents :-))