Re: Enhancement proposition: metadata for content-types

On Wed, 1 Sep 1999 jose.kahan_at_w3.org wrote:

> 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.

One problem with trusting the mail content is that instead of getting a "server dependent" type, we get a client dependent type. I have more than once seen people mailing attachments with the wrong content-type. But I guess we have to live with some kind of limitation.

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

I like the idea.

> 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.

Using the attachmentlink feature, you could easily write a CGI script that uses the meta data and the saved file, if the web server doesn't support it. It could work similar to this:

 #!/bin/sh

 echo "$meta_content_type";
 echo ""
 cat $the_attached_file

-- 
 Daniel Stenberg -- http://www.fts.frontec.se/~dast/
 You'll find my hypermail pages at http://www.fts.frontec.se/~dast/hypermail