[whatwg] Appcache feedback (various threads)

[Glenn Maynard]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> 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.
>

I've exposed cache manifests for standalone download many times.  And of
course they're clearly different--that's exactly why it's wrong for a SxS
manifest to be served with a content-type as if they're a cache manifest.

And, more importantly, it's rather bad practice to be laying claim to
generic names like "manifest".  Even "cmanifest" would be much better.

-- 
Glenn Maynard