OT: Mime Types

["Savino, Matt C" <Ma...@questdiagnostics.com>]

Can anyone point me to a good references on getting various response content
types/file extension mappings to work with IE and Netscape? I'm having a
devil of a time getting CSV and XML to save correctly AND create the correct
user prompts. We'd like the open/save dialog to come up for everything, but
we'd also like to have the correct extension show up when the user goes to
save the file. Customizing the filename for each instance is not important.
IE - QueryOutput.pdf, QueryOutput.html, QueryOutput.csv, QueryOutput.xml is
fine. 

For CSV, if I set the content type as application/excel and the user saves
the CSV file, it gets saved as a binary file. Which is fine for everything
except Notepad and Access 97, which apparently can't convert to ascii
correctly and don't see the line breaks. If I change the content type to
text/csv, IE works fine, but Netscape saves the file with some extra
carriage returns and weird characters. I could set separate content types
based on browser, but the users with Netscape who want to import their CSV
into Access 97 are still out of luck.

For XML, IE seems to always want to open any mapping with a .xml extension
no matter what you tell it the content is. We'd rather give the user the
option to save first. Also, IE 4.x tries to open every XML file it sees, but
can't -- even perfectly good XML files sitting on my hard drive. XMLSpy is
set up as my default app for .xml, but if you're already in the browser I
guess IE just ignores that.

Finally for HTML in Netscape, for some reason after I open the XSLT
stylesheet in a new window, when I go back to the opening window, I have
weird box characters all over the place -- on a page that doesn't get
redrawn at all. I've seen the same behavior on slightly different versions
of communicator 4.x on NT4 and Win2k. Very strange. I attached a screenshot.
Anyone else seen similar behavior with Netscape and stylesheets?

Thanks a lot, I know none of these are related to FOP. But I also know from
hanging around here that a lot of you are fighting with some of the same
issues in your multi-output systems. I've been searching the web and found
some good info. But every other forum I find hasn't been updated for 6
months+. 

Thanks again for any little pointers or knowledge.


Matt Savino
Senior Systems Analyst
Quest Diagnostics Clinical Trials

 <<boxes.jpg>> 

Re: OT: Mime Types

["J.Pietschmann" <j3...@yahoo.de>]

Savino, Matt C wrote:
...
If you are going off-topic, you'll probably get more
out of it on the cocoon lists.

J.Pietschmann

Re: OT: Mime Types

[Patrick Lanphier <pm...@artemisgroup.com>]

Just use application/octet-stream and format the data correctly.

Patrick Lanphier
The Artemis Group
http://www.artemisgroup.com
phone: 814-235-0444
  fax: 800-582-9710

On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Savino, Matt C wrote:

> Can anyone point me to a good references on getting various response content
> types/file extension mappings to work with IE and Netscape? I'm having a
> devil of a time getting CSV and XML to save correctly AND create the correct
> user prompts. We'd like the open/save dialog to come up for everything, but
> we'd also like to have the correct extension show up when the user goes to
> save the file. Customizing the filename for each instance is not important.
> IE - QueryOutput.pdf, QueryOutput.html, QueryOutput.csv, QueryOutput.xml is
> fine.
>
> For CSV, if I set the content type as application/excel and the user saves
> the CSV file, it gets saved as a binary file. Which is fine for everything
> except Notepad and Access 97, which apparently can't convert to ascii
> correctly and don't see the line breaks. If I change the content type to
> text/csv, IE works fine, but Netscape saves the file with some extra
> carriage returns and weird characters. I could set separate content types
> based on browser, but the users with Netscape who want to import their CSV
> into Access 97 are still out of luck.
>
> For XML, IE seems to always want to open any mapping with a .xml extension
> no matter what you tell it the content is. We'd rather give the user the
> option to save first. Also, IE 4.x tries to open every XML file it sees, but
> can't -- even perfectly good XML files sitting on my hard drive. XMLSpy is
> set up as my default app for .xml, but if you're already in the browser I
> guess IE just ignores that.
>
> Finally for HTML in Netscape, for some reason after I open the XSLT
> stylesheet in a new window, when I go back to the opening window, I have
> weird box characters all over the place -- on a page that doesn't get
> redrawn at all. I've seen the same behavior on slightly different versions
> of communicator 4.x on NT4 and Win2k. Very strange. I attached a screenshot.
> Anyone else seen similar behavior with Netscape and stylesheets?
>
> Thanks a lot, I know none of these are related to FOP. But I also know from
> hanging around here that a lot of you are fighting with some of the same
> issues in your multi-output systems. I've been searching the web and found
> some good info. But every other forum I find hasn't been updated for 6
> months+.
>
> Thanks again for any little pointers or knowledge.
>
>
> Matt Savino
> Senior Systems Analyst
> Quest Diagnostics Clinical Trials
>
>  <<boxes.jpg>>
>