Re: launching executables through HTML files
marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 93 18:27:22 -0500
From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Message-id: <9306202327.AA00795@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: sanders@bsdi.com
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: launching executables through HTML files
In-reply-to: <9306200334.AA01080@austin.BSDI.COM>
References: <9306200334.AA01080@austin.BSDI.COM>
X-Md4-Signature: 9cdb9b7ce78789eb2891f0c783c53244
Tony Sanders writes:
> I think you should be able to configure the browser as to what MIME types
> it should handle and which get passed to an external program. Something
> like the following (for X applications anyway):
>
> XMosaic*contentTranslations: \
> #override \n\
> text/html: text_html() \n\
> text/*: text_plain() \n\
> image/gif: image_gif() \n\
> image/jpg: image_jpg() \n\
> image/*: exec(xv) \n\
> video/mpg: exec(mpeg_play -loop) \n\
> audio/*: exec(audio_play) \n\
> exec/*: verify_exec() exec(exec_handler)\n\
> */*: unknown()
>
> The #override means replace the translation table completely,
> otherwise do a merge.
The reason I've held off doing that in general, believe it or not, is
because I'm not sure what method to use. I'd rather not invent a new
method. I may use mailcaps (RFC 1343). ?
> Can anyone see that having a URL "exec:..." is better than simply
> groking "content-type: exec/*"? I think using content-type is
> better because the "....:" part of a URL should specify how to
> retrive the data, not what to do with it.
Except that one thing you're never going to do (at least, that I'm
never going to want to let you do :-) is to actually retrieve
executables over the net. If you look at it from the point of view
that the access method of a URL describes the process to be used to
fetch data, then you could say that could be (a) a network protocol or
(b) a local executable, without violating the metaphor.
I dunno... I still don't like the idea of firing off arbitrary
executables on the client side, so I'm not gonna strenuously argue
either way.
I take it by your use of the exec/* content type that the command to
be executed would be in the data part of the message element and not
in the subtype field of the content type, though, right?
Marc