text/download MIME type?

[Genny Engel]

I've seen some mention here of download problems but I don't think I've
seen anything on a possible text/download MIME type.  Is anyone pursuing
this?  Would anyone else be interested in doing so?  Any tips on getting
MIME types approved?

We are trying to let patrons get their OPAC search results in ASCII text
by clicking a DOWNLOAD button.  They can select a tagged format for
downloading into a bibliographic database such as ProCite or EndNote.

If we use a text/plain MIME type, the user's browser attempts to display
the text.  Not only is this a potential problem if the search result is
large, it doesn't in fact download -- the user must save the text from the
browser.

If we use a MIME type unknown to the browser, then the user has a chance
to click "Save" in the browser's dialog box that results.  In MSIE, Save
is the default; but in Netscape, the default is "More Info" which leads
the patron off to the Netscape plug-ins pages.  The users aren't dealing
too well with being confronted with these dialog boxes at all, though; 
they expect that when they specify a download, the browser will do it
without argument. 

Ideally, we'd have available a text/download MIME type which would signal
the browser that it should NOT attempt to handle it but should save it to
a file.  Obviously, there would be security implications (config.sys you
wouldn't want to download).  But if text/download were a recognized MIME
type (e.g., with a standard file extension of .txd) browsers and mail
readers should be able to pop up any relevant warning dialog boxes before
the user does the save.

Are we missing some obvious way to allow downloads without requiring a
special MIME type and without requiring our users to negotiate the dialog
boxes?  If not, I'd like input from others who would support a new
text/download MIME type.

Genny Engel
MELVYL System User Services
University of California
genny.engel at ucop.edu