Re: [apps-discuss] Last Call: <draft-ietf-appsawg-mime-default-charset-03.txt> (Update to MIME regarding Charset Parameter Handling in Textual Media Types) to Proposed Standard

Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com> Wed, 09 May 2012 12:54 UTC

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Date: Wed, 09 May 2012 05:52:05 -0700
From: Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com>
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To: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
Cc: Barry Leiba <barryleiba@computer.org>, Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com>, apps-discuss@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [apps-discuss] Last Call: <draft-ietf-appsawg-mime-default-charset-03.txt> (Update to MIME regarding Charset Parameter Handling in Textual Media Types) to Proposed Standard
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> On 2012-05-09 04:33, Ned Freed wrote:
> > ...
> > So what you're saying is that someone could look at this document and conclude
> > that it allows inherently ambiguous registrations?
> >
> > I guess I give the people who'd actually bother to read these specifications at
> > this level of detail a bit more credit than that, but fair enough.
> > ...

> +1

> > It's still a bad idea to continue to rely on the old rule in any way. The other
> > problem with the RFC 2045 rule is that it fell apart the minute HTTP overrode
> > it and said that text/html without a charset parameter defaults to iso-8859-1.

> Actually, text/*. But we have fixed this in httpbis
> (<http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/20>).

A *very* good thing IMO.

> > So right there you have what is likely the most commonly used subtype of text
> > at this point breaking the rule you're now saying is what old types fall back
> > to. Talk about confusing! (Really, in regards to that rule, all this document
> > is doing is formalizing something that's been true for almost two decades.)
> >
> > So how about:
> >
> >     Rgardless of the approach chosen, all new text/* registrations MUST
> >     clearly specify how the charset of the content is determined; relying
> >     on the RFC 2045 is no longer permitted. However, existing text/*
> >     registrations that fail to specify how the charset is determined still
> >     default to US-ASCII.

> Sounds good to me.

> > Note that this is different than the old rule, which says that if no charset
> > parameter is present the charset must default to us-ascii.
> >
> > And we probably want to update the main registration document with something
> > similar.

> I consider this document to be an RFC-ized erratum. If we're going to
> update RFC 2045, it should include the changes we're doing here, and
> obsolete this document (-> historic), right?

That's a good way to look at it. And yes, if RFC 2045 gets updated, we'll
need to replace what's there with some version of this.

				Ned