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Re: lynx-dev Incorrect content-type-headers


From: David Woolley
Subject: Re: lynx-dev Incorrect content-type-headers
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 12:08:53 +0100 (BST)

> so a further question: does the server vary its response here
> according to something in the page in question
> or does it respond the same way for all pages it handles,
> which would seem to be very awkward?

Servers generally modify the content-type according to the file name extension.
IIS does this globally (at least at the virtual server level), but all the free
ones I am aware of allow you to override for individual directory subtrees.
Many Unix servers come with a sample configuration that only recognizes html,
not the cut short (and unnecessarily so), htm favoured by MS systems (non-long
file name MS servers and clients accessing local files would truncate html to
htm, so you could store the files there under corrupted names, but still
have the full name in the HTML source).

The official line on META...HTTP-EQUIV is that it is an instruction to the
server to add/modify the headers and is not intended for the client.  However
I think it was probably added by MS for the benefit of people who didn't
want to modify server confifurations, weren't allowed to or had servers
that couldn't be configured in enough detail.  In particular, I think it
was added to allow CP 1252 to be specified instead of the default 
iso-8859-1 character set.

More modern servers allow you to override other headers for individual files
or particular extensions.

CGI scripts and other dynamic contents, have fairly free control of the 
headers.

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