RE: Feedback on Internet Media Types and the Web

What Ned asked for seems reasonable:

> What I think is needed here is a revision/update to RFC 4288 to establish a
> registry of allowed +suffix constructs as well as expanded guidelines for their
> use. I also think pretty much any well defined structuring syntax should be
> allowed in the registry. (It's not like there's a shortage of them either.)

I don't see anything keeping you from doing that... and then going on to
define what "+json" does or does not mean in a MIME type.

I was trying to identify things that were actually wrong with what we
had and needed to change. As it stands, there's nothing in the way 
of someone defining other suffix types than "+xml" except for a lack
of people who are willing to do the work.

But that's true about most of the features we don't have. 

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric J. Bowman [mailto:eric@bisonsystems.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 7:35 PM
To: Larry Masinter
Cc: www-tag@w3.org
Subject: Re: Feedback on Internet Media Types and the Web

Larry Masinter wrote:
>
> I didn't add anything to the document about +json, because I don't
> really understand what the nature of the problem is.  My guess is that
> there is a segment of people (who? where?) who want to use MIME types
> ending in +json and somehow these haven't gotten registered?
> 

Yes, for example:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-types/current/msg01062.html

However, due to the lack of a +json suffix, it's impossible to search
the registry to see what types are based on JSON -- quite easy to do
with types based on XML -- so there's no way to tell how many media
types based on JSON exist, but it's likely that their creators would
all have preferred +json (if they didn't start by trying to register
their types using that suffix, before changing the identifier to one
with a chance of approval).

>
> I think there was some work involved in setting up +xml, and there
> are still problems with +xml types, but is there a document describing
> +json MIME types that has been rejected?
> 

No, the problem is that RFC 4627, unlike 3023, never defined such use.
So RFC 4627bis is required, in addition to Ned's suggested change to
RFC 4288 to establish a suffix registry.  Folks just assume suffixes
are allowed, due to the proliferation of +xml types.

So what's needed in your draft, is a point about a suffix registry,
rather than anything about +json per se.

-Eric

Received on Wednesday, 12 January 2011 03:54:46 UTC