HTTP browsers rely on file name extensions only when they don't have that
information in the HTTP headers - for example I could make a link to
http://host/file.mpeg.gz and if I sent the HTTP header "Content-type:
text/html", it'll render it as HTML without trying to gunzip it. If a
web browser accesses an FTP site, then it does file extension guessing
because it doesn't have that information, so that's the only situation in
which defining a content type for compressed VRML is conceivably
necessary.
The HTTP headers aren't a part of the file that comes back, they appear
before the beginning of the data and only make sense in the context of the
transaction - if your browser wants to save http://foo/world.wrl.gz as
world.wrz locally that's fine. If the issue is one of putting compressed
.wrl files as .wrz on a web server running on an operating system which only
allows 8.3 filenames, then the server is told "all .wrz files are compressed
world/vrml" and you're fine.
So again, a separate MIME type isn't needed.
Brian
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brian@hotwired.com brian@hyperreal.com http://www.hotwired.com/Staff/brian/