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

Sam Ruby wrote:
> ...
> Issue 53 is simply "Need to update media type registrations".  Outside 
> of Larry, this part seems uncontroversial.  As to Larry, it simply seems 
> to me a matter of question asked and answered[1].  Larry is welcome to 
> correct me if I am misunderstanding.
> 
> There are some technical details[2], but it seems to me that Ian is 
> willing to accept bug reports on these.  The issue could be reopened 
> should it turn out that Ian marks one or more of these bugs as WONTFIX, 
> but we only would need to deal with that if it actually occurred and 
> everything I see indicates that it will not.
> 
> So, all that remains is the work.  From what I can see in section 13, 
> the work has been done.  Other specs do it this way (in fact, I was 
> associated with Atom, which is in the IETF and it did it this way -- see 
> section 7 of RFC 4287), and it doesn't seem to me be a particularly 
> egregious approach, so frankly I'm struggling to try to figure out what 
> the real issue is here.

I agree that this is the common approach, and I have done that in other 
RFCs as well.

However, I think the situation is a bit different for HTML, as the media 
types are used for a variety of languages, and HTML5 does not describe 
them all.

> Julian, you indicated that the IETF recommended an approach, and you 
> were willing to do the work.  I fully appreciate that, but apparently 
> that recommendation was made without the knowledge that the work is 
> already done.

1) The IETF AFAIK hasn't made a recommendation; and I don't think it can 
or will. Change control for these media types is in the W3C.

2) I made the recommendation *because* the editor added the registration 
and I feel that this is not the best way to do it.

> I guess what I am asking here is:
> 
>   1) Is there some significant technical issue with the approach
>      that has been taken, or is this simply a matter of bug reports
>      that have yet to be written?

The significant issue (IMHO) is that the media types apply to all HTML 
languages, and the current RFC (2854) describing those takes these into 
account. HTML5 does not.

>   2) Is there reason to believe that the IESG would not accept the
>      work that has already been done?  If not, I am having trouble
>      understanding why ripping out this work and starting over
>      would be simpler.

There is an existing document describing the media types, so the 
simplest approach would be just to update it.

The editor has decided not to do that, but to in-line the registration. 
This will work as well, as long as we do not lose significant information.

> If there are no technical issues (modulo a few bug reports, and from 
> what I can see, there is an agreement that these are bugs), and what 
> currently exists is workable, I'm inclined to recommend closing this issue.
> ...

I'm not sure what bugs you refer to. The main issue is that if the media 
type registration moves from RFC 2854 to HTML5, it should preserve 
information about earlier versions of the language -- see 
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2854#section-1>.

BR, Julian

Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 11:46:55 UTC