Re: An MGET proposal for HTTP

Marc VanHeyningen ([email protected])
Wed, 02 Nov 1994 11:54:59 -0500


Thus wrote: ts
> 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.

Because it is capable of accepting and displaying a GIF image by
running a viewer like xv.

> 2) why, in the example of "MGET", in the first request there is only
(I assume because it was just an example, and the author didn't want
to bother with all that extra typing.)

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

Because Netscape already sends a global wildcard (although it appears
to do so incorrectly), making enumeration of types redundant.

> 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 ?

Well, that's one of the limitations of the spec; it never says what a
server should do if it wants to deliver an object in a CT that the
client didn't indicate a willingness to Accept:.

--
Marc VanHeyningen  <http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/mvanheyn.html>