Re: Last Call: 'The APPLICATION/MBOX Media-Type' to Proposed Standard

    Date:        Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:33:18 -0400
    From:        "Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com>
    Message-ID:  <411CDF3E.7000507@ehsco.com>

  | Others should note that RFC2048 is designed to facilitate registrations --
  | more definitions for common data-types are widely preferred over a
  | proliferation of "x-foo" media-types that result from high registration
  | barriers (read the intro to 2048 if you don't believe me) -- and that's
  | the limited objective of this proposal.

All that is fine, and not an issue with anyone.   The problem is that for
the tag to be meaningful, there must be at the very least a common
understanding of what it means and how it can be processed.   Better of
course is an actual published specification of the content format (somewhere).

Without that all you have is a label for a meaningless bucket of bits.

When I send a message how do I know whether it is appropriate to use the
new tag or not?   What content qualifies, and what does not?   Is it
sufficient if I'm sending a file whose name is "mbox"?   (Or which
has an extension of ".mbox" or similar).   Or is it necessary that the
content contain mail in some form?   If so, is it enough if I have a jpeg
file showing a mail box containing letters?

It is 100% useless to define a label without that referring to some
well understood content.

kre

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