In some cases (such as gopher), knowledge of the data type is deemed to be part of the retrieval algorithm. In the Gopher case, the type information is always conventionally carried allong with every reference, that is, item in a gopher menu. In other cases (such as FTP), this is not practical, because the FTP server itself cannot provide type information.
One hopes that in the near future, distributed replicated look-up services will provide a more resilient way of resolving names.
(up to requirements ,
Tim BL