Re: [media-types] New draft-duerst-mediaman-toplevel-00.txt (was: Re: WG: Still need an editor....)

["Martin J. Dürst" <[e-mail]>]

Hello Henry, others,

On 2022-07-20 17:56, Martin J. Dürst wrote:
> Hello Henry,
> 
> On 2022-07-20 13:03, Rzepa, Henry S wrote:
>> Hi everyone.  I was the original proposer in 1994 with Peter and am 
>> happy to do this.
> 
> Very nice to hear from you so quickly. Interesting that you are on this 
> list.
> 
> As for the "chemical" top-level type, given that you have volunteered as 
> a draft editor, I think there are two main hurdles:

Sorry to speak about 'hurdles' first, and for not replying earlier.

I think the best way to proceed is for you to publish an individual 
internet draft first. That will make it much easier to move on with the 
discussion of how to process it (adopt by WG with or without charter 
change or handle as individual submission).

How to best write an internet draft depends on what tools you feel most 
comfortable with (xml vs. markdown,...). To start, I recommend 
https://authors.ietf.org. Please feel free to ask lots of questions.
It may also be possible for e.g. me or Chris to help you.

Regards,   Martin.

> 1) We would need to have this added to our charter (see 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mediaman/about/)
> Chair/ADs, what do you think?
> 
> 
> 2) We would have to figure out what to do with all the "x-" prefixes in 
> the subtypes. "x-" prefixes are no longer in 
> fashion even for unregistered stuff (see 
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6648), and of course even less if 
> registered. But we would at least have to leave some language about 
> pre-existing "x-" prefixes, maybe somewhat similar to
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5064.html#section-2.5.
> 
> Regards,   Martin.
> 
>> Henry Rzepa
>>
>>> On 20 Jul 2022, at 00:17, Martin J. Dürst <[e-mail]> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello Chris,
>>>
>>> Many thanks for your comments.
>>>
>>> One point first: Do you know anybody interested in writing up a draft 
>>> that proposes to register "chemical" and the various subtypes? Now 
>>> might be a good time while we have the mediaman WG. I guess Peter 
>>> Murray-Rust may already have retired, but somebody else may be 
>>> interested.
>>>
>>> Regards,   Martin.
>>>
>>>> On 2022-07-19 22:31, Chris Lilley wrote:
>>>> I guess this published journal article could also be added to the 
>>>> references:
>>>>   Henry S. Rzepa, Peter Murray-Rust, and Benjamin J. Whitaker
>>>> /"The Application of Chemical Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions 
>>>> (Chemical MIME) Internet Standards to Electronic Mail and World Wide 
>>>> Web Information Exchange"/
>>>> J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 1998, *38, 6*, pp.976–982
>>>> https://doi.org/10.1021/ci9803233
>>>>> On 2022-07-19 16:26, Chris Lilley wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Martin, all,
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2022-03-06 12:04, Martin J. Dürst wrote:
>>>>>> For what it's worth, I managed to create and submit a first 
>>>>>> version of the draft we spoke about. Below are the details. The 
>>>>>> draft is currently just a collection of ideas and references to 
>>>>>> history. Any comments appreciated!
>>>>>
>>>>> Overall very nice, I have some comments based on a read-through:
>>>>>
>>>>>> RFC 2046 
>>>>>> <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-mediaman-toplevel-00.html#RFC2046> [RFC2046 <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-mediaman-toplevel-00.html#RFC2046>] discouraged the use of "X-" for (new) top-level types,
>>>>>
>>>>> Probably worth mentioning that this is because of requests to 
>>>>> standardize long-standing but unregistered types such as 
>>>>> x-world/x-vrml which was in widespread use long before model/vrml.  
>>>>> I say unregistered rather than informal, because x-world/x-vrml is 
>>>>> a part of the official VRML 1.0 specification (Nov 1995):
>>>>>
>>>>>> The MIME type for VRML files is defined as follows:
>>>>>
>>>>>> x-world/x-vrml
>>>>>
>>>>>> The MIME major type for 3D world descriptions is x-world. The MIME 
>>>>>> minor type for VRML documents is x-vrml. Other 3D world 
>>>>>> descriptions, such as oogl for The Geometry Center's 
>>>>>> /Object-Oriented Geometry Language/, or iv, for SGI's /Open 
>>>>>> Inventor/ ASCII format, can be supported by using different MIME 
>>>>>> minor types.
>>>>>
>>>>>> http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/vrml1/
>>>>>
>>>>>> The 'font' top-level media type was defined in RFC 8081 
>>>>>> <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-mediaman-toplevel-00.html#RFC8081> [RFC8081 <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-mediaman-toplevel-00.html#RFC8081>], a work of the 'justfont' IETF WG, in 2017
>>>>>
>>>>> Correct, perhaps worth adding that this was formalizing the 
>>>>> widespread use of the unofficial font/* top level type which people 
>>>>> were using in preference to official, registered types.
>>>>>
>>>>> The lack of (and fierce resistance to [1]) a font/* top level type 
>>>>> is why WOFF 1.0 originally specified application/font-woff
>>>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/CR-WOFF-20110804/#appendix-b
>>>>>
>>>>> and then changed to font/woff after RFC 8081 was published.
>>>>> https://www.w3.org/Fonts/REC-WOFF-20121213-errata.html
>>>>>
>>>>> It is also why CSS created, and still uses, "format strings" rather 
>>>>> than Internet Media types to describe downloadable font formats.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Wikipedia (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_file_format) 
>>>>>> reports the unofficial use of a 'chemical' top-level type
>>>>>
>>>>> I find "Wikipedia reports" a bit weak, and (on the basis of 
>>>>> first-hand experience [2]) suggest instead:
>>>>>
>>>>> A chemical/* top-level MIME type was proposed by Peter Murray-Rust 
>>>>> and Henry Rzepa at a workshop at the First WWW conference in May 
>>>>> 1994. It is still in widespread, but unregistered, use in that 
>>>>> community.
>>>>> https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/chemime/
>>>>>
>>>>> [1] Ned Freed said to me, sometime around 1996, that a font/* top 
>>>>> level type would never be allowed.
>>>>> [2] I studied under Peter Murray-Rust, at Stirling University and 
>>>>> participated in this and other workshops at the first WWW conference.
>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Chris Lilley
>>>>> @svgeesus
>>>>> Technical Director @ W3C
>>>>> W3C Strategy Team, Core Web Design
>>>>> W3C Architecture & Technology Team, Core Web & Media
> 
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-- 
Prof. Dr.sc. Martin J. Dürst
Department of Intelligent Information Technology
College of Science and Engineering
Aoyama Gakuin University
Fuchinobe 5-1-10, Chuo-ku, Sagamihara
252-5258 Japan