Re: Thought experiment

[Greg Stein <gstein@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:03:54PM -0700, Tim Bray wrote:
>...
> <sidenote>People of Earth to Greg Stein: could we change the Apache 
> default media type for ".atom" to "application/atom+xml" ASAP, like 
> right now, as a gesture in the right direction?</sidenote>

The mime.types that is shipped with Apache derives its information from
two places: the IANA, and (apparently) some standardized W3C types. I
don't know where Roy got the W3C list to incorporate, but will follow up
(and report back here).

In short, it has to appear in one of those two places for it to be in the
mime.types file.

Note that the rules for IANA registration are covered under RFC 2048. A
brief glance over that appears that we'd need to be an RFC *first* instead
of just an I-D.

Of course, that is rather painful if the Apache file waits for the RFC --
there would be a huge lag between when the type is settled in the spec
process, when you really want to have it pushed out to users, and when it
is finally published by the IANA. IOW, the pragmatic choice is for Apache
to be optimistic/pragmatic: assume success and jam that in there today.
Let me chat with Roy; I'm going to assume we can simply refer to section 8
of our I-D as "sufficient", then remove the special quotation once the
IANA publishes.

Cheers,
-g