[9263] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: Content negotiation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William F. Hammond)
Fri Nov 10 11:15:43 1995
From: "William F. Hammond" <hammond@sarah.albany.edu>
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 1995 11:11:46 -0500 (EST)
To: www-talk@w3.org
Cc: nazgul@utopia.com
Resent-From: www-talk@w3.org
Kee Hinckley<nazgul@utopia.com> writes:
> ... When I said "version", I included platform. In fact one of my pet
> peeves with User-Agent fields is that too many browsers neglect to
> mention the platform. ...
The whole User-Agent thing is being carried too far. For example,
I (as a USER) have an X11-resource
Netscape.geometry: 590x398-50-2
If you are looking at "platform", you should also care about that --
or at least care about what monitor I am using so that you might
make an inference about "geometry".
What you are pushing for is just not "robust".
And what about the USER? Some users are helpless, but many are not
and have definite ideas about what they want.
Don't you want the USER to be part of content-negotiation? (Have you
looked at the gopher model [view submenus] of content-negotiation? See
the URL
gopher://boombox.micro.umn.edu:70/11/gopher/gopher_protocol/Gopher%2b
and in that menu: "gopher+.txt" (30 July 1993).)
-- Bill
