Re: ISSUE-53: mediatypereg - suggest closing on 2009-09-03

On Aug 23, 2009, at 4:10 PM, Larry Masinter wrote:

>>> 1) Should HTML5's update to the text/html and application/xhtml 
>>> +xml MIME
>>> types be:
>>>    A) Inline in the HTML5 spec, as is the custom for other recent  
>>> W3C
>>> specifications?
>>>        OR
>>>    B) Posted as an separate IETF RFC, updating the previous RFC  
>>> for this
>>> purpose?
>
> I suggest at least considering:
>
>     C) Left alone: do nothing
>
> The purpose of RFC 2854 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2854
> was to provide a registration of "text/html" which would
> not need updating as HTML evolved.
>
> Yes it says
>
> Published specification:
>      The text/html media type is now defined by W3C Recommendations;
>      the latest published version is [HTML401].  In addition, [XHTML1]
>      defines a profile of use of XHTML which is compatible with HTML
>      4.01 and which may also be labeled as text/html.
>
> but the intent at least was to allow the MIME registration to
> stand even as the language evolved.
>
> but if HTML5 is an evolution of HTML401, then no new
> registration is needed to update the reference.
>
> Is there anything in RFC 2854 that actually needs updating?
> Why should text/html registration need updating at all?

Interesting proposal. I think letting the old RFC stand would be  
potentially confusing in a few ways:

1) It says HTML401 is the "latest published version", which will be  
false when HTML5 goes REC. It doesn't even say "at time of writing",  
just that it's the latest version.

2) There's no explicit "or any later version" clause, so it's not  
obvious that future versions of HTML are allowed. Future versions of  
XHTML, for example, aren't; how is one to tell from this RFC which  
future specs are included? Nothing in the RFC would let you tell that  
HTML5 is allowed, but XHTML 1.1  not.

I think at the very least, some kind of update is needed to clarify  
these issues.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 00:11:14 UTC