[gopher] Re: Item Type Suggestions

[Cameron Kaiser <spectre@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I thought of something a little earlier today to find a middle ground between
being able to handle multiple types if a client wants, but not having to add
more item types other than generic types.

What would people feel about a URL syntax like this?

gopher://gopher.site.invalid/s(audio/mp3)/music/dada.mp3

The (MIME type) would be optional and used by the server as an optional
request for transcoding or an alternate version, and could be used by the
client to do something special with the file. In fact, the () could be
used for any kind of server specific comments, such as session state
separated by commas, but that's for later.

This also solves our text/* problem:

0(text/css)/document/style.css
0(text/xml)/document/document.xml

At least this way you can have arbitrary MIME types subsumed under general
classes. The MIME type would be optional and could be ignored or employed
by the client as they see fit. A nice middle ground.

Note that servers would need to be updated to support this construction
in their selectors, but only servers that support this selector syntax should
be offering it in the first place.

Opinions? I'm trying to balance concerns such as JumpJet's and others on
proliferating item types, but still trying to give people like myself,
John, etc. the ability to optionally specify more complex behaviour without
having to impose anything special on the client.

-- 
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@xxxxxxxxxxxx
-- Do me a favour: don't breed. -- "Sledge Hammer!" ---------------------------