Merging our Media Types
Lex Spoon
lex at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Mar 30 17:35:00 UTC 1999
Mark Guzdial <guzdial at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>
> I'm considering creating some kind of MediaType class that can be
> associated with file types and provide functionality for these various
> situations. I don't think it's enough to just do MIME, though MIME is
a
> good subset or starting set. The problem is that we're also inventing
new
> media types (like SqueakyPages), so I think we need a more flexible
system.
>
> Comments? Is somebody doing something like this already?
>
Standardization here would be nice!
There are two databases along these lines that seem to make sense:
1. one mapping file extensions into a MIME-like type, ie "gif" -->
"image/gif"
2. one mapping MIME-like types into functionality. For instance, how
do you deal with a GIF file?
For the first, "MIMEDocument guessTypeFromName: aString" seems like a
pretty good interface. It's central, it asks exactly the question that
is needed, and it isn't tied to any particular application. It's
lacking, however, a way for people to add new types by using a
changeset.
For the second database, there is nothing in the image right now.
However, it's also not so clear-cut exactly what this should do. Is it
even possible to define "functionality" which would be usable by both
the file lister and a web browser? How do you deal with ".cs" files,
for instance?
Finally, one comment: MIME already does allow experimental types which
start with "x-". In fact, audio/x-midi was in use for a long time
before audio/midi became standardized. So it seems like we could use
things like x-squeak/x-squeakpage and thus stay with MIME proper, if we
want.
Lex
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