Fellow netters;
We're working on a MIME implementation with extenstions to handle the
transport of PC files. Obviously the generic APPLICATION/ type will
transport them, but we want our user agent to be able to determine
what "application" generated the file, and further to do something
"intelligent" with it, including extracting the file into an appropriate
filename (with extension) onto the PC and potentially launching the
related application.
We have to use the PC extension as a guideline for identifying the
application (the user will still have to verify it since it's far from
100% accurate) but in any case, the only means we have come up with so
far is creating a separate APPLICATION/X-subtype for every pc application
file-type we can handle, including different subtypes for different
types of files handled by the same application (i.e. Excel .XLW, .XLS,
etc). This makes for a long list of subtypes, though I see no way around
it at this point.
I have seen the RFC which defined additional types for a few PC file
types, but we're looking at setting up a site-defined list which could
easily incorporate hundreds/thousands of types.
Any thoughts/suggestions? We're going to implement whatever we come
up with in the next few weeks, and I'd prefer to stick to what could
at least potentially be a potential standards track, and hope that as
a new standard is defined we can easily adapt to it.
TIA,
Chris Bartram