On Aug 29, 2011, at 3:30 PM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
> I need some technical support when it comes to Internet Explorer (IE) and PDF
> files.
>
> Here at Notre Dame we have deposited a number of PDF files in a Fedora
> repository. Some of these PDF files are available at the following URLs:
>
> *
> http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:1000793/PDF1
> *
> http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:832898/PDF1
> *
> http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:999332/PDF1
> *
> http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:832657/PDF1
> *
> http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:1001919/PDF1
> *
> http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:832818/PDF1
> *
> http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:834207/PDF1
>
> Retrieving the URLs with any browser other than IE works just fine.
>
> Unfortunately IE's behavior is weird. The first time someone tries to load
> one of these URL nothing happens. When someone tries to load another one, it
> loads just fine. When they re-try the first one, it loads. We are banging our
> heads against the wall here at Catholic Pamphlet Central. Networking issue?
> Port issue? IE PDF plug-in? Invalid HTTP headers? On-campus versus off-campus
> issue?
>
> Could some of y'all try to load some of the URLs with IE and tell me your
> experience? Other suggestions would be greatly appreciated as well.
I don't have IE to test from, but it's been my experience that in past versions
of IE, it would use the file's extension no matter what the mime-type sent was.
I'd first see if you can trick IE ... it looks like Fedora doesn't like you
sending extra stuff in PATH_INFO, so you might have to abuse QUERY_STRING for
this:
http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:1000793/PDF1/?filename.pdf
http://fedoraprod.library.nd.edu:8080/fedora/get/CATHOLLIC-PAMPHLET:1000793/PDF1/?file=filename.pdf
If either of those work fine in IE, but the first one doesn't, that's the
problem.
I don't know what's possible in Fedora, so I don't know if it's possible to do
some URL re-writing so it'd always serve something that IE accepts as a PDF.
If you could insert an extra HTTP header, you might be able to trick it with
Content-Disposition, but that'll also tell some browsers to download the file
rather than display it themselves:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2183.txt
-Joe
