Re: an idea in search of comments
Bruce Perens said:
> From chuck Thu Oct 19 15:52:46 1995
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> To: chuck@richnet.net (Charles A. Stickelman)
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> Subject: Re: an idea in search of comments
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> Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 14:39:43 -0700
> From: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>
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> The MIME presentation worked OK with my mail user-agent, EXMH. It was a good
> deal more ugly and clunky than if you had simply embedded the URLs for the
> same files in your message. EXMH would have recognized and highlighted the
> URLs, and if I clicked on them it would have started Netscape to follow them.
>
Alas, that functionality doesn't seem to be universal. Pine didn't want
anything to do with the URLs I embedded in a message. Which is more
prevalent? Does it matter?
> I understand this is more of a complaint about my mail user-agent than about
> the concept of using MIME.
>
> Thanks
>
> Bruce
>
One thing I've yet to test, but have been told works, is the
message/alternative MIME-type. Apparently, you can write the
message such that different locations or access-methods can be
available. If the first one doesn't work (say host is not
responding) then it tries the second, etc. This could provide
a mechanism where alternative ftp servers could provide the packages.
The same mechanism allows for alternative access-methods as well.
If I made a package available, the order might be ftp.richnet.net
via anon-ftp, bertha.richnet.net via mail server, ftp.debian.org
via anon-ftp. I believe that this would not present any more
complex user interaction than my first example.
Chuck
--
Charles A. Stickelman <stick@richnet.net>
Practical Network Design (419) 529-3841
9 Chambers Road
Mansfield, OH 44906 USA
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