Re: lynx-dev mime-types, server responsibility, etc..

[David Woolley]

> Hmmm. There's a grain of truth in what he says.  If your .mailcap file
> contains lines for "application/x-Shrinkit" and "application/x-Binary II"
> (ugh!  whitespace!), Lynx will send an "Accept" command (this may be what
> he means by "request") for those types.  Absent that "Accept",
> the server may feel justified in defaulting to text/plain.

Accept tells the server your preferences, but it will only send the MIME
type if it actually has a version of that type.  If it only has what it 
thinks is plain text, it will only send text/plain, whatever the true 
format of the file.

In any case, most servers are not configured to do content negotiation,
and it requires modern servers, caches and browsers for it to be cached
effectively.  (Apache can handle the cache negotiation, but doesn't, by
default, because of downstream problems.)

If the server doesn't have any of the types requested in the Accept
statement, it will not return anything at all.

> 
> > Kind of interesting though that, for someone who's continuing to write Apple
> > II software and running a web site for Apple II stuff, he won't modify the
> > server end to make it easier to download files..
> > 
> You're too kind.

He's probably an MSIE user who doesn't understand that MSIE is broken.