Re: [apps-discuss] font/*

Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org> Sat, 12 November 2011 09:31 UTC

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Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 08:14:58 +0000
From: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
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Subject: Re: [apps-discuss] font/*
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On 10/11/2011 01:47, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
> On 2011/11/09 10:16, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>> On 11/8/2011 4:27 PM, Graham Klyne wrote:
>>> It's not clear to me what purpose would be served that cannot be handled
>>> perfectly adequately by application/*
>
> Then why do we have image/, audio/, and video/? application/ would be perfectly
> adequate for them, wouldn't it?

My supposition (and this is probably no more than post-hoc rationalization) was 
that the top level types were available for routing messages to an appropriate 
client, which might be a different device in a multimodal environment.  E.g. 
text/* to device that handles text, image/* to one that handles static images/*, 
similarly for audio/* and video/*.

Application/* then becomes appropriate for any content that doesn't depend on 
any particular presentation capabilities or modalities.

Interestingly, model/* has been mentioned in discussion as an example.  With 
increasing use of personal 3D printing (cf. http://reprap.org and spinout 
projects), I think it's a top-level type who's time is coming.  (I've even 
wondered about an update for RFC 1437...)

Of course, it all hinges on why we have top-level types at all.  From, a purely 
taxonomical perspective, I think a strictly 2-level hierarchy is always going to 
call for some arbitrary choices.

#g