Re: distinguishing browser types

lilley (lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk)
Mon, 24 Apr 1995 06:19:03 +0500


First - I sent an unedited message to the list just now. Sorry.
My mailer has just *one* question that does not take return, all
the rest do :-P

Kee Hinckley wrote:

> Which leads me to another question. Are there any browsers out there that
> actually set the Accept fields based on the helper applications? I know
> Netscape doesn't. It makes it rather difficult to determine what formats
> can be sent to a browser.

Arena (all versions that I have used, from 0.90 onwards) send out
Accept: headers based on your .mailcap, but not the system wide mailcap,
for example

HTTP........ Connected, socket 5
HTTP Tx..... GET /hypertext/WWW/Arena/0.96 HTTP/1.0
Accept: application/x-dvi; q=0.500
Accept: video/*; q=0.500
Accept: video/mpeg; q=0.500
Accept: text/tab-separated-values; q=0.500
Accept: image/x-png; q=0.500
Accept: image/png; q=0.500
Accept: application/applefile; q=0.500
Accept: application/x-metamail-patch; q=0.500
Accept: sun-deskset-message; q=0.500
Accept: mail-file; q=0.500
Accept: default; q=0.500
Accept: postscript-file; q=0.500
Accept: audio-file; q=0.500
Accept: x-sun-attachment; q=0.500
Accept: text/enriched; q=0.500
Accept: text/plain; q=0.500
Accept: text/richtext; q=0.500
Accept: application/andrew-inset; q=0.500
Accept: x-be2; q=0.500
Accept: application/postscript; q=0.500
Accept: message/external-body; q=0.500
Accept: message/partial; q=0.500
Accept: image/x-xwd; q=0.500
Accept: image/*; q=0.500
Accept: audio/basic; q=0.500
Accept: audio/*; q=0.500
Accept: */*; q=0.100
Accept: application/x-compressed; q=0.100
Accept: application/octet-stream; q=0.100
Accept: text/x-html3; q=0.800
Accept: text/html; level=3; q=0.900
Accept: text/html; q=0.600
Accept: image/x-xbitmap; q=0.600
Accept: image/x-xpixmap; q=0.600
Accept: image/jpeg; q=0.600
Accept: image/gif; q=0.600
Accept: text/plain; q=0.400
User-Agent: Arena/0.96s libwww/

Note that there are good quality factors for the HTML formats. I had
thought it sent out the stuff from /usr/local/lib/mailcap too, but
obviously not; a pity. Notice also the q factor for */*

It is difficult to see how a single q factor could effectively resolve
a situation with GIF and JPEG both available; JPG is better for many
pictures, but GIF is better for some. Ah well, notice I have x-png
in there :)

There are some wierd and non-standard accept lines in there, because
the .mailcap was generated by metamail, which tries to understand
sun mailtool stuff as well as MIME. Really I need more granularity
than a single file for all applications.

--
Chris Lilley
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Technical Author, Manchester and North HPC Training & Education Centre|
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| Computer Graphics Unit,             |  Email: Chris.Lilley@mcc.ac.uk |
| Manchester Computing Centre,        |  Voice: +44 61 275 6045        |
| Oxford Road, Manchester, UK.M13 9PL |    Fax: +44 61 275 6040        |
+-------------------------------------+ BioMOO: ChrisL                 |
|       URI: http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/staff/lilley/lilley.html        | 
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|       "The first W in WWW will not wait."   François Yergeau         |
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