[gopher] Re: Encouraging MIME types

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Sep 14, 2002 at 10:14:32PM -0500, Timm Murray wrote:

> text/text will still have a type of '0', GIF files will still have a type

I assume you mean text/plain.

> of 'g', etc.  Note that files with similar types would *not* use the
> standard Gopher types.  For instance, a text/html document would never be
> sent as a Gopher type of '0'.

text/html is type 'h' anyway.  However, type 0 is defined to include more
than you are defining it to mean.

> 2)  A new Gopher type, 'm', is to be implemented which tells a client to 
> check 
> the MIME type in the Gopher+ space.

A Gopher+-aware client should already be doing this; there is no need to
explicitly tell it to.

> 3)  The 'I' type is to be either completely deprecated or used as a synonym 
> for 'm'.  GIF files can still use the 'g' type, but any other images should 
> be sent with the 'm' type and their proper MIME type.

This breaks backwards compatibility, I suspect.

> 4)  No new Gopher types are to be defined--MIME types are to be used as a 
> complete replacement.  The only possible exception to this is for research 
> purpases, but even then, MIME types are encouraged.

I can agree with that :-)

However, overall, I don't really see any benefit to the 'm' type or the
change in meanings for '0' and 'I'.  Gopher+ clients should already be using
the Gopher+ attributes (in fact, since views permit one menu entry to
actually have multiple MIME types, they *must*).  Gopher0 clients are still
left with the single-character types, which I agree are a nasty thing.  I
don't see what purpose breaking some of the gopher0 clients will serve, I
guess.

-- John