Re: regex for media types

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:25:48 -0700
Mark Nottingham <mark.nottingham@bea.com> wrote:

> 
> I took an action item to double-check what a regex for a media type 
> should look like.

[snip]

> Given that the type rule is extensible by IANA, it seems most sensible
> 
> to NOT enumerate the current types. This leaves us with:
> 
>     [a-zA-Z0-9!#$%^&\*_-\+{}\|'.`~]+/[a-zA-Z0-9!#$%^&\*_-\+{}\|'.`~]+

Unless the working group/task force has reason to believe that the IANA
is going to change its long-standing policy of conservatism in the
approval of new types, this statement is not quite correct.

One new type has been added since the publication of the four MIME RFCs
("model").  There is good reason to suggest that an enumeration of types
is preferable to an open content model: what are you going to do with a
type you don't recognize?  The reluctance of IANA to approve new types
is another factor, as is the reasoning behind it: new types are avoided
because they require changes to deployed software.

So, I would think that it would be better to enumerate, with an escape
to vendor-defined or random types.  But the enumeration is valuable,
signalling the set of types that processors should (in some fashion)
support.

Amy!
-- 
Amelia A. Lewis
Architect, TIBCO/Extensibility, Inc.
alewis@tibco.com

Received on Monday, 4 August 2003 11:11:53 UTC