[whatwg] Video with MIME type application/octet-stream

[Robert O'Callahan]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:55 PM, Robert O'Callahan <robert at ocallahan.org>wrote:

> I just became aware that application/octet-stream is excluded from being a
> type "the user agent knows it cannot render".
>
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/video.html#a-type-that-the-user-agent-knows-it-cannot-render
> Apparently this was done in response to a bug report:
> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7977
> Neither the bug report nor the editor's response give any indication why
> this change was made.
>
> This change means files served with application/octet-stream will make it
> all the way to the step "If the media data<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/video.html#media-data>can be fetched but is found by inspection to be in an unsupported format
> ...", so implementations have to add support for binary sniffing for all the
> types they support. We didn't need this before in Gecko. What was the
> motivation for adding this implementation requirement?
>

Hmm. I guess it doesn't add any implementation requirements beyond what you
need to handle the complete absence of a Content-Type (which we currently
don't handle, but I suppose we should). So this isn't really a problem.

I'd still like to know why application/octet-stream has been added here,
though.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]
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