Re: What is a media type?

[Mark Nottingham <mnot@xxxxxxxx>]

In my experience, "media type" is colloquially used to mean the 
type/subtype construct, without parameters; a particular context 
specifies whether parameters is allowed (e.g., Content-Type). That 
said, it's not clear in the specs; there is no ABNF rule or even terms 
that I can find that we could refer to to disambiguate this.

We should probably be more precise.

As previously mentioned, the updated reference will be to:
  http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-freed-media-type-reg-03.txt

I might make a last call comment to the effect that it would be handy 
to have some to have some terminology disambiguated here.

Cheers,



On Apr 11, 2005, at 5:03 PM, David Powell wrote:

> The "type" attribute of atom:content can be a MIME media type:
>
> > 4.1.3  The "atom:content" Element
> [...]
> > 4.1.3.1  The "type" attribute
> [...]
> > [...] Failing that, it MUST be a MIME media type [RFC2045] with a
> > discrete top-level type (see Section 5 of [RFC2045]).
>
> After looking at RFC2045, I wasn't very clear about what a "media
> type" is.
>
> Does it include parameters? Parts of 2045 suggest that a "media type"
> might include parameters:
>
> > 5.  Content-Type Header Field
> >
> > The purpose of the Content-Type field is to describe the data
> > contained in the body [...] The value in this field is called a
> > media type.
>
>
> Other parts (most of the document in fact), suggest that a "media
> type" is only the top level element, such as "text":
>
> > After the media type and subtype names, the remainder of the header
> > field is simply a set of parameters
>
>
> Is "media type" an accurate term for us to use?
>
> I'm asking this because I really don't know whether parameters are
> supposed to be allowed in the "type" attribute or not.
>
> --
> Dave

--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/