[whatwg] [mimesniff] Sniffing archives

[Gordon P. Hemsley]

To be clear, I'm asking this because I would like to remove the
sniffing of archive types from the mimesniff spec if there aren't any
valid usecases.

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Gordon P. Hemsley <gphemsley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The mimesniff spec currently includes signatures for ZIP, gzip, and
> RAR archive formats. However, no major browser seems to support them
> natively (they all prompt for download), and it's not clear whether
> the type detection is a product of the browser code or the OS, or
> whether it is used beyond choosing an appropriate file extension for
> the download.
>
> Are there any valid usecases for explicitly sniffing archive formats
> instead of letting them default to application/octet-stream like other
> binary files would? Note that Henri Sivonen has previously raised the
> issue that ZIP-based formats (like office suite documents), for
> example, would be misleadingly sniffed as ZIP files, and there is no
> easy way around that.
>
> --
> Gordon P. Hemsley
> me at gphemsley.org
> http://gphemsley.org/ • http://gphemsley.org/blog/



-- 
Gordon P. Hemsley
me at gphemsley.org
http://gphemsley.org/ • http://gphemsley.org/blog/