Re: Disclaimer for Authoritative Metadata (ACTION-793)

On 4/5/2013 6:49 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> The note reads: "The requirements of this finding with respect to the
> HTTP Content-Type header are not respected by user agents and
> specifications. The TAG may at a future point issue a revised finding
> that takes these developments into account."

I am a strong believer in the Authoritative Metadata finding, and I am fine 
with the note proposed above by Anne. The first sentence is factually 
correct, and the second correctly signals that this issue is of active 
interest to the TAG.

Having said that: I do not think the right long term solution is to weaken 
the TAG finding [1] which basically says to follow the pertinent 
specifications, such as the one for HTTP [2].

The right debate, IMO, is whether to modify RFC 2616 to make the 
Content-type header advisory rather than binding. I would likely be against 
that too, as I would rather modify the pertinent media-type registrations 
to allow for type determination based on content, but if we want to allow 
"sniffing" without explicit support in the media type registration, then 
the right place to enable that is in the HTTP specification, IMO.

In any case, I think a finding that says: "respect the pertinent 
specifcations" needs no changes. I am still fine adding Anne's note.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/mime-respect-20060412
[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt

Received on Tuesday, 16 April 2013 01:27:33 UTC