Future TAG work on "MIME and the Web"

This note is to discuss future TAG work on "MIME and the web".


I'm not really in a position to decide what the TAG should continue working on, with regard to "MIME and the Web"
and a "product" specifically focused on that topic. I know we started out with this as an area of discussion with
a single TAG "product" in mind. However, in fact, there are several areas of activity which have spawned from
past work in the area, but are either outside of W3C or TAG, or well outside of the scope of a discussion on
"MIME".


a) The "HappIana" work to improve the perceptions and ease and quality of the MIME registries and the consistency
   with W3C activities

This is interesting and important work, but it is not a TAG product per se. Related, but also not particularly
TAG work, is to get W3C groups to register types and change W3C processes around type registration. 
Again, though, this seems unlikely to be TAG work.

b) A discussion about registries in general, when to use them, when to use URLs, and its relationship to
  persistent identifiers and a definition of persistence.

This is an interesting topic but its scope is way beyond anything specific to MIME. I think Jenni has expressed some
Interest in pursuing this topic.

c) an interesting note that a Media Type label like "text/html" or "image/gif" is in fact a persistent identifier
  of *something* (a language), and the questions about persistence for such things depends on having a clear
  model of what it means to talk about the "same" language in the face of evolution, forking, subsetting,
  overlaps like polyglot, etc.

This might be interesting to the TAG, but it's abstract, and Jonathan has been the only TAG member so far
to really get into the topic to add something to it.

My latest thought is I should recast the work that I've done as a paper for the Philosophy and the Web
Workshop in April.

I'm not sure there's any other activity that needs to be done in the TAG, that the TAG could contribute
any more too, or that there's anyone else interested in discussing here.

So my proposal (in lieu of any counter-proposals) is: the TAG should declare victory (as we did with the 
HTML5 review) and close the "MIME and the Web" product.

Larry

Received on Wednesday, 1 February 2012 18:45:25 UTC