MIME-type magic hierarcy

[Arnout Engelen]

Hi!

I was looking for a way to convince Apache to serve up MusicXML files, 
which have the plain '.xml' extension, with the proper 
'application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml' MIME type rather than the 
generic 'application/xml'.

Because it's impossible to distinguish between a random xml file and a 
MusicXML file, I turned to magic. It's a bit inelegant because I can't 
predict at what offset the doctype will start:

# xml
0       string          \<?xml   application/xml
# musicxml
 >38     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >39     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >40     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >41     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >42     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >43     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >44     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >45     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >46     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >47     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >48     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >49     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >50     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >51     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >52     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >53     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >54     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >55     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >56     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml
 >57     string          \<\!DOCTYPE\040score    
application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml

However, Apache will choke on this, because for a MusicXML file it will 
yield both application/xml and application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml.

Is there another way to do this? Would there be anything fundamentally 
wrong with adapting the software so that in case of multiple matches, 
the last (most specific) one is chosen?


Arnout