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

["Martin J. Dürst" <[e-mail]>]

Hello Chris, others,

On 2022-07-19 22:26, 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):

Well, that may have been one of the reasons, but I think it's more in 
line with a general trend that ultimately led to RFC 6648. I added an 
explicit negative criterion for "X-" and a reference to RFC 6648.

>  > 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.

Added.

> 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/

Thanks, integrated.

(all edits in the github repo, official draft to follow soon)

> [1] Ned Freed said to me, sometime around 1996, that a font/* top level 
> type would never be allowed.

Well, "never" was 20 years. Unfortunately, Ned is no longer with us.

Regards,   Martin.

> [2] I studied under Peter Murray-Rust, at Stirling University and 
> participated in this and other workshops at the first WWW conference.
>