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

I've settled down on Internet Media Type, or Media Type for short, because it's the most widespread in RFCs and implementations.

I also try to stick to "header parameters" and "media type parameters", as they help anchor parameters to their owner definition.



-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Masinter [mailto:masinter@adobe.com] 
Sent: 04 April 2010 16:59
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'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


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Received on Sunday, 4 April 2010 21:35:49 UTC