From: Marcin Raczkowski <mailing.mr@...>
Date: 2008-02-04T09:48:26+09:00
Subject: Re: mechanize get methods returns both ::File and ::Page

7stud -- wrote:
> Marcin Raczkowski wrote:
>>> Since Mechanize is used to parse forms and html, that makes sense: if 
>>> you don't have an html page(i.e. one with a Content-Type = text/*html*), 
>>> then you can't parse it as html.
>> yes you can - use plugable parasers
>>
> 
> Explain how you would parse plain text such as:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My name is Sally.
> 
> Yours Truly,
> Sally
> 
> as html??  What's the <title>?  Which part is a <form>?
Did mama hit you in a head when you were young?

Do you know what are MIME encodings?
Servers are requred by http specification to provide mime-encoding - and 
content should be interpreted acording to it - if it's text/plain it 
should be just displayed if it's application/zip then saved etc.

BUT since most servers don't implement it fully - or have to be 
configured - or php cgi script (or ruby for that matter) might alter it 
- and sometimes does - html can be served with mime-type text/plain

since mechanized follows that standard - it assumes that data with mime 
text/plain is in fact plain text just like one you provided - but what 
if it's website (which Carl clearly explained in initial post) - then 
you have to force it to treat it as html - clear enough?