Re: [MacPerl] "the pod"

[Tom Holub <tom_holub@ls.berkeley.edu>]

At 8:32 AM -0500 11/12/96, Dick Munroe wrote:
>>"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.

It would seem a lot better to define POD as a MIME type, and then access
the pod files with file://diskname/directory/foo.pod.  You then can
reference pod files on the web and on your local hard drive the same way,
and in accordance with standards.

---
Tom Holub (tom_holub@ls.berkeley.edu)
Letters & Sciences Computer Resources
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