Re: Charset mandatory in unix/linux
Martin Duerst writes:
At 00:10 06/03/13, Ned Freed wrote:
(cc'ing the ietf-types list since this doesn't seem like an appropriate topic for ietf-822)
The charset parameter is mandatory in the MIME content-type attribute.
Actually, I don't know of a single case where this is true.
I don't, either.
Huh.
So I looked closely, and I find that you're right. How about stressing this a little more in the successor to RFC 2045?
RFC 2045 is about message structure and only deals with with the aspects of media types that interact with message structure. RFC 2046 is where media type behavior is defined, and section 4.1.2 of that document is quite clear about the behavior of the charset parameter.
Ned? Section 5.2 could state clearly that «Content-Type: text/plain» does NOT mean the same as a missing Content-Type header.
Since it does mean that in email, I fail to see why such a change would be (a) Correct or (b) A good idea. Ned
Ned Freed writes:
Since it does mean that in email, I fail to see why such a change would be (a) Correct or (b) A good idea.
If «content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii", «content-type; text/plain» and a missing content-type field are equivalent, I would say that encoding the character set is mandatory in email, just as Jakob Palme wrote in the first message. A message sender can't avoid specifying the character set, even by leaving out the charset parameter. Arnt
Ned Freed writes:
Since it does mean that in email, I fail to see why such a change would be (a) Correct or (b) A good idea.
If «content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii", «content-type; text/plain» and a missing content-type field are equivalent, I would say that encoding the character set is mandatory in email, just as Jakob Palme wrote in the first message. A message sender can't avoid specifying the character set, even by leaving out the charset parameter.
It is quite true that a user of text/plain in email has no choice but to specify the charset, either implicitly by omitting the parameter, in which case it defaults to US-ASCII, or explicitly by including it. But that's not what Jacob said. He said:
The charset parameter is mandatory in the MIME content-type attribute.
This is quite clearly incorrect. The _parameter_ is not mandatory, _specification of the charset_ by one means or another is. (More precisely, it is unavoidable due to the way the defaults are set up. Referring to mechanisms involving defaults as mandatory is not good use of terminology IMO.) Now, perhaps Jacob meant to say that the charset of plain text has to be specified in some way. I'm not a mind reader and cannot divine intent. All I can do is respond to what he did say, which was incorrect. Ned
participants (2)
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Arnt Gulbrandsen -
Ned Freed