Re: [MacPerl] "the pod"

[munroe@acornsw.com (Dick Munroe)]

>"file" tells the browser to fetch the document from the local disk, so I
>suppose it *is* a protocol. However, a pod is a document type, which presumably
>could be served over http or ftp or as a file.

URL = Universal Resource Locator and is, therefore, an ADDRESS of and
ACCESS INFORMATION for a piece of information (nominally a "file").  By
this definition all the front pieces of URLs make sense (http, gopher, ftp,
file, ...).

POD is a content type.  To access POD via an HTTP server you should (note
should) arrange your server to serve it in a sensible fashion by rendering
it into html or doing a file transfer so the user can render it themselves.

You CAN pervert the URL mechanism (at least on a Mac you can, I don't know
about other boxes) so that pod://...  will be properly interpreted LOCALLY
as a new protocol combining some aspects of both URL and content type.

But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Dick

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Dick Munroe                             munroe@acornsw.com
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