gzipped images in SIAP 1.0

[Norman Gray]

On 2007 May 23 , at 01.24, Mark Taylor wrote:

> However, ignoring the headers altogether and following Tom's advice  
> to look at the magic
> numbers is almost certainly a better idea: more reliable (the  
> headers might be wrong) and probably easier.

Myself, I would disagree with this, on public-interest grounds.

If a tool responds to breakage by saying `I know what you mean', then  
the service in question is allowed to continue being broken.  That  
diminishes the utility of the MIME type system, and forces every  
other client to guess too.  If a tool -- especially a tool with the  
ubiquity and authority of Topcat -- simply reports that the service  
is broken, and how[1], then the service maintainers will be forced to  
fix their broken service, albeit at the cost of some short-term  
irritation.

Postel's law is an engineering heuristic, not an architectural  
principle.

But I say all this with some diffidence, since I don't myself write  
the code at either end of this transaction.

All the best,

Norman

[1] Could it perhaps quote the email address of the service  
maintainers, as gleaned from the registry?

-- 
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Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
eurovotech.org  :  University of Leicester, UK