- From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 11:17:22 +1000
- To: Larry Masinter <LMM@acm.org>
- Cc: "'Dan Brickley'" <danbri@danbri.org>, "'Sebastien Lambla'" <seb@serialseb.com>, <www-tag@w3.org>
Adding to the confusion, the BNF in BCP13 is: type-name = reg-name subtype-name = reg-name At any rate, it's important to remember that HTTP is a MIME-like protocol; i.e., informed but not necessarily restricted by MIME. HTTPbis lists the differences in <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-09#appendix-A>. One way to resolve some of these issues is to add text that outlines how HTTP selectively leverages the media type registry. Cheers, On 05/04/2010, at 4:09 AM, Larry Masinter wrote: > The main problem I've seen is when people are not careful to > distinguish the "internet media type" from the "content-type > string", because the latter can contain parameters > > text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 vs. text/plain;charset=windows-1252, > for example, which share a "Internet Media Type" but are > different content-type strings. > > So > > draft-abarth-mime-sniff talks about MIME type sniffing, but the > charset sniffing is in a different document. I think the general > topic of "sniffing" (i.e., examining content using heuristics > to determine the likely actual type, whether or not there is > a content-type label supplied) might be approached more holistically > if the terminology were clearer. > > I'm not sure if there are other terminology confusions > that are as serious. > > MIME was the protocol design which defined Internet Media Type > registry, subsequently adopted by HTTP (between HTTP 0.9 > and HTTP 1.0), so it's understandable how "MIME type" and > "Internet Media Type" are sometimes used interchangeably. > > > Larry > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Dan Brickley [mailto:danbri@danbri.org] > Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 9:15 AM > To: Sebastien Lambla > Cc: Larry Masinter; www-tag@w3.org > Subject: 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 > > -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Tuesday, 6 April 2010 01:17:55 UTC