Enhancement proposition: metadata for content-types

From: <jose.kahan_at_w3.org_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 19:21:37 +0200 (MET DST)
Message-Id: <199909011721.TAA15804_at_tuvalu.inrialpes.fr>


I'd like to know if folks would be interested in having this feature inside hypermail.

One of the problems with the MIME attachments is how to make the web server send back their content type.

One solution could be to add a file extension, but that extension is server dependent.

Another solution is to use meta-data to store the Content-Type header associated with each MIME attachment.

What I do is that in the attachment directory (say attach/num/), I create another subdir called .meta. I store attachment att-name in attach/num/att-name and its meta information in attach/num/.meta/att-name. The meta information is the value of the Content-Type header as specified in the MIME header.

When a user browses an attachment, the http server includes the headers found in the meta file (Content-Type) and sends the attachment to the user.

What's nice here is that I don't have to modify the filename or invent new extensions when we get new attachment types.

I implemented this version on my working version of hypermail and am succesfully using it against Apache (which supports metadata files). I'm unaware if other web servers, besides Apache and CERN (obsolete) support metadata.

Thanks,

-Jose Received on Wed 01 Sep 1999 07:21:32 PM GMT

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