Re: [apps-discuss] font/* (and draft-freed-media-type-regs)

[David Singer <[e-mail]>]

I probably shouldn't volunteer people, but I know Vladimir Levantovsky has expressed interest in this question in the past.  I am sure he'd want to be aware of this discussion.  In fact, I am cc'ing him here….


On Nov 14, 2011, at 13:44 , Ned Freed wrote:

>> On 2011/11/13 5:25, Larry Masinter wrote:
>> > I see no use case for why having font/opentype is any better than application/opentype
> 
>> It's just fine if you, and some others, don't see it. Does that mean
>> that you have to fight against it? You haven't shown, even less
>> mentioned, any problem for font/opentype.
> 
> Good point. I have no skin in this particular game - aside from slightly
> complicating the media review process I have no personal need for font/*. But
> if there's a constituency this type helps, I'm all for it.
> 
>> My guess is that we would have around 10 or so font types registered
>> (and no font type sniffing) if a font/ top level type had been approved
>> in a 1990'ish timeframe.
> 
> And we may or may not have any luck rectifying this at this late date. But I'm
> not  seeing a reason not to try.
> 
>> ...
> 
>> > I also recall a number of years ago an attempt to define "chemical/*" as a
>> > new top level type for use in defining file formats?
> 
>> So what? Were there good reasons to reject it? Or was it rejected
>> because some people believed that new top level types were "A BIG
>> NO-NO"? Or because of some FUD?
> 
> Didn't chemical kind of morph into model? Or am I getting the history confused?
> 
>> > My conclusion from this discussion is that we should declare the MIME
>> > hierarchy closed to new top level types; we've only gotten very limited use and
>> > value out of the hierarchy, compared to the pain and difficulty (text/xml vs
>> > application/xml).
> 
>> The problems between text/xml and application/xml are very specific. And
>> they may be interpreted to say that tying particular processing rules to
>> particular types, unless absolutely necessary (e.g. structured types),
>> may be a bad idea. That doesn't mean that top-level types in general are
>> a bad idea.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> The reason that we have gotten very little value out of registering new
>> top level types may be mostly that virtually no new types have been
>> registered, because people are claiming that we get very little value
>> out of them. It sounds funny, but it isn't.
> 
> No, it really isn't funny, is it?
> 
> 				Ned

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.