At 6pm on 3/03/04 you (Mark Nottingham) wrote:
Hi Ned,
I've been following this discussion for a while now, and while it pains me to object to something that would lessen my own workload, I find that I have to agree with Keith about this. The stability problems associated with DNS names are just too great. [...] Given the huge amount of damage that's been inflicted on the world by badly designed media types, I am forced to see further reduction of the barriers as a reckless step in the wrong direction.
I agree these are the biggest -- and serious -- concerns with the proposal. However, the status quo doesn't seem to be working too well; rather than discouraging frivolous or poorly-considered media types, it encourages people into the "x-" space. This is borne out when you examine mime.types files and Web browser configurations; deployed software and formats are ignoring the process quite freely.
I would strongly second this. Even very well-known types such as Macromedia Flash still universally go by names like application/x-shockwave-flash, which helps noone. There is no review of these names, and no means to prevent them clashing. If using the DNS for providing unique names is seen as a bad idea, both because the names are volatile and because it is misusing a system that was never designed to provide GUIDs, then how about creating a separate registry of 'organisations' which can then manage their own trees? So, e.g., Macromedia could register */org.macromedia.* with the IETF, and then manage that namespace themselves. The idea of each MIME type carrying a parameter giving a URL with a human-readable description of the format is also well worth preserving. Ben -- Every twenty-four hours about 34k children die from the effects of poverty. Meanwhile, the latest estimate is that 2800 people died on 9/11, so it's like that image, that ghastly, grey-billowing, double-barrelled fall, repeated twelve times every day. Full of children. [Iain Banks] ben@morrow.me.uk