Re: The use of MIME on the web: issues, toward a revised "finding" or joint W3C/IETF document

On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Sebastien Lambla <seb@serialseb.com> wrote:
> 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.

Yes, this is a good point. I've been involved in standards plenty but
have only a pretty vague instinct for how I'm supposed to refer to
this stuff. Generally I tend to *say* "MIME-type", but have this loose
guilty sense that the real label is "Media type", but that as a phrase
seems somehow less specific whereas "MIME-type" has the feel of a
precise technical term. In either case I mean "those things like
'text/html' and 'application/rdf+xml'". It would be great to have a
terminology summary / bluffer's guide.

cheers,

Dan

Received on Sunday, 4 April 2010 16:15:50 UTC