ActionForwards in Struts - design query?

Hello.

Well - am also asking this in other forums, but thought I'd post this
Struts-related query here too.

An application team has been using a particular "style" of doing things.

In their typical Struts application, they use the Action's execute (or
similar delegate) method to process a particular request. Now, because they
do not really want to forward to another view [sounds a bit strange in
itself], instead of returning a true ActionForward (like
actionMapping.findForward{"<somefwdname">)], they do the following:

httpResponse.getWriter().write(<some data>);
return (null);

I find the "return (null)" to be a bit strange.
Now, in Struts, it works fine, because if the returned ActionForward is
null, Struts does nothing - which is what the team desires.

My question is: 
A. Is this how Struts was intended to be used? 
B. Is this how it *should* be used?

In my opinion, if you want to return a null ActionForward, wouldn't it then
just be better to use a standard req/resp servlet rather than an Action?

To clarify, when/why such a scenario may arise: If the request is to
retrieve a document, then imagine, a user requests for it from the view,
then the Action feteches the document from wherever, and needs to only
return a response back to the browser (client). Depending on the
content-type, the browser would leave the original view unchanged, but
possibly prompt/open up a new window to show up the requested document?

Is there an easier, elegant manner to schieve this?

Thanks,

Saurabh Bobde 
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