[whatwg] Appcache feedback (various threads)

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2011, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> 
> > > That's far too generic for servers to default to mapping *.manifest 
> > > to text/cache-manifest.  For example, Windows uses *.manifest for 
> > > SxS assembly manifests.
> >
> > Do they have a MIME type? If not, it doesn't much matter.
> 
> It does if they're ever served by a webserver, because they'll be served 
> with a completely unrelated Content-Type.  (Also, the file format is 
> actually XML, so arguably they do--application/xml--though I wouldn't 
> configure a server that way in general.)
> 
> Microsoft's mistake is using such a generic name--but these files 
> shouldn't make the same mistake and lay claim to "*.manifest" as if it's 
> the only type of manifest that exists.  File extensions will never be 
> without collisions, but an effort should at least be made...

Given that SxS manifests don't seem like they'd ever be something you'd 
want to make available to download standalone, and that if you were going 
to expose them to a user you'd want a text/* type anyway, and that cache 
manifests are clearly different (no valid SxS manifest can be a valid 
appcache manifest), I'm honestly not finding a very compelling reason to 
make appcache manifsts have a more verbose extension. The clash here seems 
rather theoretical.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'