Re: default return is "text/html"?

Marc VanHeyningen (mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu)
Tue, 19 Jul 1994 16:03:03 +0200

Thus wrote:
>We could add a new MIME type, "application/unknown" as the default and require
>compliant httpd's to provide this and/or clients to assume it. However,
>provides no more information than if the Content-Type field is missing.

I believe "application/octet-stream" does not differ in any meaningful
way from "application/unknown". If a server really doesn't have any
idea what a file is, that's a perfectly suitable tag for it.

By the way, one thing I never saw was whether the message without any
"Content-Type" had a "MIME-Version" header. If there is a
MIME-Version header, I really think we should try to stick with the
specified behavior of MIME (defaulting to text/plain;
charset=us-ascii) unless there is some overwhelming reason not to. If
there is no MIME-Version header, we effectively have the same
situation as HTTP/0.9 and so the body could be anything.

There is no inherent connection between HTTP and HTML, and no reasons
to assume that the Web community might not choose to replace one of
them but not the other at some point in the future. They should no be
bound together so strongly.

--

<A HREF="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/mvanheyn.html">Marc VanHeyningen</A>