[Bug 6684] Disregard of RFC 4329 and IANA MIME Media Types

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6684





--- Comment #19 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>  2009-04-01 23:35:46 ---
The charset="" stuff is a non-issue, since browsers totally ignore the actual
MIME type. You could use image/png and it would work just as well as
text/javascript or application/ecmascript.

Is there an actual benefit to the spec using the new types?

There is a cost to using the new types, it makes the spec harder for people to
understand.

Unless there is an actual benefit to using these types, we should not jump on
the bandwagon just because it's a standard. There are lots of things that get
standardised. We still need to evaluate them each time.


(In reply to comment #18)
> >
> > What benefit does this bring to the user or the author?
> 
> Clarity.

Not at all, text/javascript is far more widely understood than
application/ecmascript by authors. The spec would be _less_ clear if we used
the latter type.


> The HTML5 spec does not live on it's own, but in a environment with all the
> other specs, and there's no obvious reason why the HTML5 spec should "win" such
> a conflict.

This isn't about HTML5 winning a conflict. It's about us having to decide
between the real world, which uses text/javascript, and an obscure RFC that
almost no author has ever heard of, which says to use other types despite there
being absolutely no real benefit to doing so.


If it would help, I don't mind adding the new types to section 4.3.1.1
Scripting languages. I added the following to section 2.2.1 Dependencies: "The
MIME type used to refer to ECMAScript in this specification is text/javascript.
This is a willful violation of RFC 4329. [RFC4329]"


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Received on Wednesday, 1 April 2009 23:35:56 UTC