Re: [media-types] Thoughts on suffixes, single and multiple

[Paul Libbrecht <[e-mail]>]

Hello all,

On 6 Apr 2024, at 16:24, Manu Sporny wrote:

> Yes, and the timeline for getting that right is undetermined. It's
> boring plumbing work that needs to be done (or, at least, we should
> make a concerted effort).
>
> What we might end up doing is writing a bunch of text, as we have done
> for multiple suffixes, and then after we feel we've documented the
> meaningful variations (there seem to be about three-ish of them?),
> decide that the whole thing has too much nuance, and is too
> complicated to get right and/or police the registration of, and just
> throw it all out, preferring simpler rules. A failure here would at
> least establish that we did the work to explore the space.

I’ve been following things from far here but I really think that it is ok if the spec about suffixes define one way to generalise / or assume media types given some transformations. There is no reason to try to find oneself needing to think instead of every composite-media-type-designer (that’s how I understand “boring plumbing”).

It’s good if it applies to many.
It’s not impossible that this makes some (existing or used) media-types look non-conforming and it should be accepted; otherwise there is no way forward.

Just my 2p.

Paul