Re: [apps-discuss] Feedback about "Update to MIME regarding Charset Parameter Handling in Textual Media Types"

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> On 2012-02-22 14:25, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> > In reference to
> > https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/appsawg/draft-ietf-appsawg-mime-default-charset/latest/draft-ietf-appsawg-mime-default-charset.html

> Henri,

> thanks a lot for the feedback.

> I believe that one thing that makes the current spec a bit confusing is
> that part of it sound like we're changing the defaults for existing
> types that specify their own defaults. We are not; *but* we are changing
> the framework so that new types can be defined in a saner way, and also
> so that (maybe) the definitions for text/xml and text/html can be tuned
> in the future. (Not sure about text/plain)

> So, maybe add this as a clause to the abstract; and also clarify the
> prose where we mention text/xml and text/html?

> Also, I see that you would like us to sanction whatever algorithm the
> HTML5 spec has come up with for handling text/html; potentially
> including content inspection and out-of-band information.

> I think out-of-band information is a non-starter; it just doesn't work
> for many environments, and breaks basic assumptions about message
> semantics; if you need to do that for text/html so be it, and label it a
> "willful violation", but by all means don't let this hack leak into new
> media type definitions.

Agreed.

> Another change I want to do is to add to:

> "New subtypes of the "text" media type, thus, SHOULD NOT define a
> default "charset" value. If there is a strong reason to do so despite
> this advice, they SHOULD use the "UTF-8" [RFC3629] charset as the default."

> a sentence that if it's not UTF-8, it MUST be an ASCII-compatible encoding.

I think that's a very good addition to make.

				Ned