Re: First impressions...

On Sun, 2002-01-27 at 21:37, Jon Trowbridge wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-01-25 at 10:33, Eric M. Hopper wrote:
> > I suspect that MIME
> > type is not a good match. For example most source code would be
> > text/plain, but LISP source would be best served by a diff that was
> > aware of LISP's easily parsed expression syntax, not by some arbitrary
> > delimeter like lines or words that has nothing to do with the structure
> > of the language.
>
> Fine-grained mime types for source code certainly exist. You could mark
> the file as text/x-lisp (or text/x-c, text/x-h, text/x-java, etc.)

Yes, but then you get into encoding issues. Is your Java in UTF-8 or
Unicode? How would you prefer to have it checked out? How about your
C?

As I said, I think the information MIME type was designed to convey is
somewhat of a mismatch for the information a revision control system
needs to function.

That said, I would like to see official MIME types that explicitly typed
something as being source code written in a particular language. If
it's important enough for a file extension, it's important enough for an
official MIME type. I might humbly suggest a new source/ top level
type. Though text/source- would also work.

Have fun (if at all possible),

-- 
The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they
be properly armed.  -- Alexander Hamilton
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.org 
http://www.omnifarious.org/~hopper) --