If standardized, should be "alternate-types" and be a comma separated list
in priority order.
Donald
From: Dan Crevier <Dan(_dot_)Crevier(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:16:31 -0800
Message-ID: <B4F6FFAE(_dot_)1189B%Dan(_dot_)Crevier(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com>
In-Reply-To:
<4(_dot_)3(_dot_)2(_dot_)20000316201037(_dot_)00bc5860(_at_)not-real(_dot_)proper(_dot_)com>
On 3/16/2000 8:29 PM, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
...
Proposed solution: every time the MIME handler comes across an unknown
media type, it looks in the body part and sees if it is XML. If it is XML,
add this media type to the "hand to the generic XML processor" list. If it
is not XML, add this media type to the "don't hand to the generic XML
processor" list. If you are really paranoid about missing something, clear
the latter list every so often.
...
This sounds like a good solution. Another solution to the general problem
of "How do I specify that a given MIME type can be handled as another
alternate MIME type?" might be to do something like:
Content-Type: application/iotp; alternate-type=text/xml
If the client doesn't have something that can handle application/iotp, it
starts going through the alternate types to see if there's another way to
handle the data. Current clients would just ignore the alternate-type.
This seems like a really general solution that would solve this particular
problem.
Dan