Re: TAG ACTION-407 -- text/html media type and legacy

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Maciej Stachowiak writes:

> <commenting with HTML WG chair hat off>

Likewise speaking only for myself

> I understand the desire to satisfy the MIME registration compatibility
> requirements. However, it looks to me like this proposed text makes
> HTML 2.0, HTML 3.2, and HTML 4.0 conforming for the text/html MIME
> type, whereas RFC2854 only allowed HTM 4.01. Are these additions
> intentional? I don't understand the purpose of expanding conformance
> relative to the previous registration to include these long-obsolete
> specifications.

We have to be very careful with language here.  IETF policy for
reregistration of media types in general, and RFC2854 in particular,
is that they have _nothing_ to say about conformance to the language
specs that they reference -- that is left to those specifications.
Furthermore, although it's fine for successive language specs
referenced by successive RFCs (re)registering a particular media type
to add/subtract/change language features, that does _not_ affect the
core commitment that documents from the earlier language versions, as
referenced in preceding media type (re)registrations, are OK to
_serve_ with the specified media type.  That's _all_ that's at issue
in the media type registration.  So RFC2854 says "Now you can serve
HTML 4 as text/html" as well as saying "and all that stuff you used to
be able to serve as text/html -- still OK to serve as text/html".

I think Ian and I are on the same page now wrt this issue, if I
understand his earlier response correctly.

> Also: RFC2854 allows a profile of XHTML 1.0 (presumably Appendix C) to
> be sent as text/html, whereas the proposed text below does not. Is the
> omission intentional?

I'll pick that up in a separate message.

ht
- -- 
       Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
      10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
                Fax: (44) 131 651-1426, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
                       URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
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Received on Thursday, 22 April 2010 18:26:18 UTC