Re: File Types

Marc VanHeyningen ([email protected])
Fri, 14 Jul 1995 16:53:18 -0700


> On Fri, 14 Jul 1995, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
>
> > I think what you really want to do on the server side is make sure the
> > wordperfect files have a MIME type like
> >
> > application/x-wordperfect
> >
> > or something like that (anyone?)
>
> NCSA httpd's stock mime.types has application/wordperfect5.1, which I
> suppose is as much of a "standard" as anything.

It is a registered type name, yes.

> Makes it rather painful
> to support multiple versions, I'd think.

Apparently the company felt strongly they didn't want to do the obvious thing,
which is:

application/wordperfect; version=5.1

for some reason. I say the company's wishes should be ignored. :-)

> is illegal syntax, which doesn't infuse me with confidence that this is
> being addressed consistently. On another note: I know next to nothing about
> Wordperfect, but does it allow any kind of key binding? It's rather
> sketchy to download files from untrusted sources into applications not
> built with the concept of trust in mind.

WordPerfect allows macros (i.e. programs) to be included in documents, and
therefore has potential security risks. A proper security review was never
done when the type was registered; the Gopher folks said it could be done
later on. Needless to say, it never was.