Re: Proposed TAG Finding: Internet Media Type registration, consistency of use (fwd)

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Al Gilman wrote:
> At 05:12 PM 2002-05-22, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> >This discussion on the www-tag alias may be of interest to the www-qa
> >group.
> >
> >For the record, I strongly disagree with the position below (so please
> >don't misattribute the following to me).
>
> In the interest of a well-informed and coordinated process, note that there is a related issue (GC09-20 [media type]) involving with the SGRS specification.
>
>  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-voice-wg/2002May/0043.html
>
> Rob, are you suggesting that we run concurrent threads on www-tag and www-qa, or that those interested in Quality pick up the TAG thread?  What follow-up would you suggest, process-wise?

I would suggest picking this up on the www-tag alias, rather than trying
to have a coordinated thread.

Rob

> >---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 08:52:57 -0700
> >From: Tantek Çelik <tantek@cs.stanford.edu>
> >To: "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
> >Subject: Re: Proposed TAG Finding: Internet Media Type registration,
> >        consistency  of use
> >Resent-Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 11:48:29 -0400 (EDT)
> >Resent-From: www-tag@w3.org
> >
> >> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2002/0129-mime
> >
> >Interesting if not a bit humorous (unintentionally I'm sure).
> >
> >This was my favorite part:
> >
> >  "An example of incorrect and dangerous behavior is a user-agent that reads
> >some part of the body of a response and decides to treat it as HTML based on
> >its containing a <!DOCTYPE declaration or <title> tag, when it was served as
> >text/plain or some other non-HTML type."
> >
> >Incorrect and dangerous?
> >
> >While it is a laudable goal to avoid and/or limit sniffing when at all
> >possible, unsubstantiated comments like these are inflammatory at best, and
> >horribly naive at worst - given how many HTML (.html etc.) pages are still
> >served as text/plain. (Nevermind GIFs and other images served as
> >text/plain).
> >
> >My second favorite part:
> >
> >  "Web software SHOULD NOT attempt to recover from such errors by guessing,
> >but SHOULD report the error to the user to allow intelligent corrective
> >action."
> >
> >Typically a user of a web site does not have the ability to correct the
> >website itself.  Nevermind perform an "intelligent corrective action".
> >Which usability genius decided that it was a good idea to report errors to
> >the user that are meaningless to the typical user (typical user has zero
> >knowledge about mime types) and the user has no chance of fixing?
> >
> >If a UA did report such errors with a web site, the typical user would take
> >the corrective action they usually take when errors are reported from a
> >website, and that is to try a different UA.
> >
> >Tantek
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2002 20:54:28 UTC