It is IMHO misconceived to specify compression as such in the MIME type. If
the binary VRML shall really be just the compressed ASCII VRML, then
the compression specification belongs to the Content-encoding
not to the Content-type. HTTP for instance specifies both, and
clearly specifies the distinction between them.
(That is meant as a general statement
about VRML transfer. But we have to keep in mind that so far only
HTTP (and, in another realm, SMTP) specifies and implements a mechanism
to rigorously handle that kind of metainformation. Thus we may well
discuss in terms of HTTP, which I did above.)
--Steffen Meschkat mesch@artcom.de