Bug 41240

Summary: BRF files support
Product: Apache httpd-2 Reporter: Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault>
Component: Runtime ConfigAssignee: Apache HTTPD Bugs Mailing List <bugs>
Status: NEEDINFO ---    
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P2    
Version: 2.5-HEAD   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   

Description Samuel Thibault 2006-12-25 14:11:46 UTC
Hi,

BRF (BRaille-Formated) files are text files in the BRF charset.  They're usually named something.brf, and are widely used for shipping books, courses, tax forms, etc. on the web.  By nature, they should hence be announced with

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=brf

Just like http://brl.thefreecat.org/test.php does.

The brf extension should hence be added to mime.types's text/plain entry, and AddCharset BRF .brf should be added to httpd.conf.

Samuel
Comment 1 Ruediger Pluem 2006-12-25 15:05:19 UTC
*** Bug 41241 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 2 Joshua Slive 2006-12-26 07:42:01 UTC
Not really duplicates, since this one was for 1.3.  But there is very little
chance we are going to make any non-essential change to the retired 1.3 branch,
so I'll just bump this one to 2.x.

As I believe I told you on the users list, for this change to happen we would
need some evidence that the .brf extension is very rarely used for any other
mime type.  Otherwise, adding it to mime.types would break some people's configs.

As far as the AddCharset issue, we don't ship with any AddCharset directives
activated by default in 2.2.  We could stick it in extra/httpd-languages.conf,
but that file is basically unmaintained garbage.  To get into the main
httpd.conf, we would need to see some argument for why this charset should be
treated specially.  Lots of users need to manually configure
AddCharset/AddDefaultCharset to properly configure their content.
Comment 3 Samuel Thibault 2006-12-26 14:17:20 UTC
Yes, sorry for not having taken the time to put more information about BRF files.

The only other use of "brf" I could find is for "brief" ("letter" in german-like languages), used by the "Verein 2000" software suite in german countries.  Even this doesn't get many hits in german's google.  There is hence a very low probability that this ever gets used as an exchange format.

On the contrary, the brf format for braille ascii is mostly and widely used for download on a wide range of website (this is actually how braille readers acquire books, pay taxes, etc).

Why I'm asking this to be the default for brf files is that people who run websites which propose .brf files will probably _not_ be skilled enough for knowing that to let visitors read them very easily, they should add the mime.types entry and the charset entry (remember that their area is accessibility, not computer administration).