[Web4lib] Using suffixes for identifying formats

[Thomas Dowling]

On 01/18/2011 04:08 AM, Isidro F. Aguillo wrote:
> Dear colleagues:
> 
> A large number of pdf files currently available from many repositories are
> not using the .pdf suffix at all. Although this is not a major problem I
> think this is a "bad practice" but I do not any document stating this.
> Could you help me on this issue?

Why do you think it's a bad practice?

There are no files on the web - only data streams.  What *ought* to matter
is not ".pdf" at the end of the file name but "application/pdf" at the
start of the stream.

That said, many browsers remain clueless about default file names for
saving and downloading (if it's PDF, "output.php" is not a good guess for
a "Save As..." option).  They benefit from a little handholding, so when I
spit PDF out of a script, I usually tack on "/Something_Sensible.pdf" at
the end of the URL.


Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu