- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 08:59:19 -0700
- To: Sebastien Lambla <seb@serialseb.com>
- CC: "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
I'll put "terminology" down as another issue. Yes, there are lots of terms which seem to be used inconsistently for similar but not exactly the same thing, including MIME type, Content-type, the content-type header, the actual type, the implied type, and there are other MIME headers, other HTTP headers which describe the content, the language, the language version, the Internet Media Type.... There are lots of terms, used inconsistently as technology has evolved, and I agree there's some confusion about them. The specification I'm imagining will note the different historical uses of terms in various specs. Do you have a set of terminology you find best when you're teaching or writing about these ideas? A set of references you point people at? I know often when I start to explain about MIME types, people joke about "well, there are the ones that pretend they're in a box, and can't get out, and the ones that pretend they're walking on a tight-rope and...." Larry -- http://larry.masinter.net -----Original Message----- From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Sebastien Lambla Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 6:07 AM To: Larry Masinter Cc: www-tag@w3.org Subject: RE: The use of MIME on the web: issues, toward a revised "finding" or joint W3C/IETF document As both a web framework author and trainer, I find that there is lots of confusion introduced when various names are introduced for various areas, such as the Internet Media Type being referred to as MIME, as in "MIME sniffing" or "The use of MIME", as opposed to the historical MIME type. For me, tomatoes and tomatoes, but for the people that I introduce to those standards, I feel that those things are a barrier to wider communication. -----Original Message----- From: Larry Masinter [mailto:masinter@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Larry Masinter Sent: 04 April 2010 04:42 To: Sebastien Lambla Cc: www-tag@w3.org Subject: RE: The use of MIME on the web: issues, toward a revised "finding" or joint W3C/IETF document I'm gathering issues, not setting boundaries. Is there an issue for which calling it "MIME" vs "Internet Media Type" would make a difference to you as far as whether it is relevant? Larry -----Original Message----- From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Sebastien Lambla Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 5:33 PM To: Larry Masinter; 'Paul Cotton'; 'Maciej Stachowiak'; julian.reschke@gmx.de Cc: 'Sam Ruby'; Ned Freed; www-tag@w3.org; 'Adam Barth' Subject: RE: The use of MIME on the web: issues, toward a revised "finding" or joint W3C/IETF document Am I right in assuming that /s/MIME/Internet Media Type ? -----Original Message----- From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Larry Masinter Sent: 03 April 2010 18:12 To: 'Paul Cotton'; 'Maciej Stachowiak'; 'Julian Reschke' Cc: 'Sam Ruby'; Ned Freed; www-tag@w3.org; 'Adam Barth' Subject: The use of MIME on the web: issues, toward a revised "finding" or joint W3C/IETF document (bcc to apps-discuss@ietf.org and public-html@w3.org) The W3C TAG is discussing MIME registration and usage. See recent minutes at [1] and a related TAG action items [2]. [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2010/04/01-minutes.html [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2010Apr/0008.html The MIME documents in IETF RFCs are written generally, often with email usage of MIME in mind. I thought it would be useful to bring together the various issues around MIME use on the Web. Although there are some TAG findings on MIME type usage, there do seem to be a number of open issues that recur, and are otherwise causing difficulty. I was thinking of trying to document the issues, different points of view, with an eye toward an update to TAG findings http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2004/0430-mime http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/mime-respect I thought I would start discussion on www-tag@w3.org, which seems like a good a place as any. At the moment I'm collecting issues and pointers to possible differing opinions, with the idea of a single document which at least outlines the positions are, even if there isn't agreement yet. So I'm just gathering issues and pointers to documents, arguments, bugs, mailing list archives at the moment. Maybe doing this on a Wiki would be useful? In the meanwhile, please feel free to email me privately. I don't expect this work to hold anything up, but perhaps have some future influence going forward. Here's what I have so far as a set of issues: * Authority of MIME labels vs. sniffing: and internet draft http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abarth-mime-sniff on MIME sniffing, as well as extended discussions on those. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/apps-discuss/current/msg01250.htm l http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/mime-respect * Inferring media type information when there is no label: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2010Mar/0043.html * "Polyglot" documents: (i.e., a sequence of bits which, when labeled with different types, has (reasonably) equivalent meanings). * "Alternate" documents: (i.e., a sequence of bits which has very different meanings when labeled with different types, e.g., "as RDFa" vs "as HTML") * Relationship between MIME types and embedded version identifiers: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0385.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0497.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0372.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jan/0213.html * error handling and MIME types http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2009Apr/0020.html * use of additional parameters http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2009Jan/0053.html and difficulty of inferring * The role of fragment identifiers in web content (which isn't used in email). * Other media-description headers which aren't content-type and their use (content-language) * Updating MIME type registrations vs. new MIME type registrations http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jan/0213.html =============================
Received on Sunday, 4 April 2010 15:59:59 UTC