Re: [dev] Suckless operating system

On 15 Jun 2010, at 11:24, Nick wrote:

> Quoth Ethan Grammatikidis:
>> I think it's pointless because most file types can be identified
>> from their first few bytes. This loops back around to my
>> content-type argument, why should the server go looking for file
>> type when the client gets it handed to it anyway?
>
> Because that way you can do content negotiation. Granted, that isn't
> much used today,

Why not? With more international businesses than ever on the web and
the internet spread further over the globe than ever before, and with
content negotiation having been around for such a long time, why is it
hardly used? Perhaps because it sucks?

> and it would make sense to make content-type
> optional, but I like the idea of content negotiation. Being able to
> e.g. get the original markdown for the content of a page, without
> the HTML crap, navigation etc, would be really nice in a lot of
> cases.

Maybe, but I doubt the majority of web designers would like you
looking at their source, as simple as it might be, and the likelihood
of big businesses letting you get at their web page sources seems very
low. Maybe I'm just terminally cynical.

> I get the impression the W3C expected content negotiation to
> be used a lot more when they wrote the HTTP 1.1 spec.

Erm, yeah. The W3C seems to have expected a lot of things would be
practical and useful.

-- 
Complexity is not a function of the number of features. Some features  
exist only because complexity was _removed_ from the underlying system.