Working on a RESTful API lately (which is as close to working on a 9P filesystem as I can get these days) I've been puzzling over this issue: is content negotiation a good thing or a bad thing? Or to justify posting to this list: what would be the proper 9P way of not only representing different "renditions" of the same information in a synthetic filesystem but also give consumer a chance to declare *a set* of preferred ones.
Lets assume a classical example (modified slightly to fit 9P): a synthetic filesystem that serves images from a web cam. The very same frame can be asked for in different formats (.gif, .png, .pdf, etc.). Is serving /<date>/<time>/<camera-id>/gif/frame /<date>/<time>/<camera-id>/png/frame ... /<date>/<time>/<camera-id>/pdf/frame and relying on reading /<date>/<time>/<camera-id> for the list of "supported" representations really better than what HTTP content negotiation offers? Thanks, Roman.
