On Tue November 2 2004 08:54, Hollenbeck, Scott wrote:
Please review the MIME type registration template described below. The IESG has received a request to register this MIME type in the standards tree. It is a product of Ecma International. A URL for the formal specification is included in the template.
-Scott- ---------- MIME media type name: text
MIME subtype name: CSTA-type [...] Security considerations: This content type is designed to carry CSTA data types over network protocols. Appropriate precautions should be taken to insure that applications observing these CSTA objects are authorized to do so. [...] Applications which use this media type: The text/CSTA-type MIME type is used to carry CSTA data types specified in CSTA XML (ECMA-323) over various types of network protocols.
Additional information: CSTA XML (ECMA-323) is an application level protocol that enables an application to control and observe communications involving various types of media (voice calls, video calls, instant messages, Email, SMS, Page, etc.) and devices associated with the media.
Why is this being proposed for registration in the text media type tree? As far as I can tell, this media type appears to be an application data format containing control data, not textual information (in the sense of the use of "text" in the MIME standards (RFC 2046) and Internet Best Current Practice (RFC 2277): RFC 2046: The five discrete top-level media types are: (1) text -- textual information. The subtype "plain" in particular indicates plain text containing no formatting commands or directives of any sort. Plain text is intended to be displayed "as-is". No special software is required to get the full meaning of the text, aside from support for the indicated character set. Other subtypes are to be used for enriched text in forms where application software may enhance the appearance of the text, but such software must not be required in order to get the general idea of the content. Possible subtypes of "text" thus include any word processor format that can be read without resorting to software that understands the format. In particular, formats that employ embeddded binary formatting information are not considered directly readable. A very simple and portable subtype, "richtext", was defined in RFC 1341, with a further revision in RFC 1896 under the name "enriched". RFC 2277: All human-readable text has a language. Many operations, including high quality formatting, text-to-speech synthesis, searching, hyphenation, spellchecking and so on benefit greatly from access to information about the language of a piece of text. [WC 3.1.1.4]. Humans have some tolerance for foreign languages, but are generally very unhappy with being presented text in a language they do not understand; this is why negotiation of language is needed. In most cases, machines will not be able to deduce the language of a transmitted text by themselves; the protocol must specify how to transfer the language information if it is to be available at all. The interaction between language and processing is complex; for instance, if I compare "name-of-thing(lang=en)" to "name-of- thing(lang=no)" for equality, I will generally expect a match, while the word "ask(no)" is a kind of tree, and is hardly useful as a command verb. 4.2. Requirement for language tagging Protocols that transfer text MUST provide for carrying information about the language of that text. Buried in an Annex in the 530-page referenced ECMA document one finds: This annex specifies a schema for CSTA data types that can be used to encapulatate CSTA data objects so that they can be carried over various types of network protocols such as SIP. A specific MIME media type, text/CSTA-type is designed to contain these data objects. The formats of the data types are specified in Clause 9. I can see nothing in the proposed media type registration or in the referenced document that indicates that the media type is to be used to convey human-readable natural language text as opposed to application-specific data type, nor do I see any provision for carrying information about language of text as required by RFC 2277. A concrete example of how the proposed media type would be used to convey human-readable text in some specified language would help to provide justification for registration of the proposed subtype in the text media type tree.