MIME type and extension clarification

[Michael Brauer <michael.brauer@sun.com>]

Dear TC members,

in our last TC meeting we discussed what our position on non standard 
document types that conform to our specification is. An example for this 
are OpenOffice.org HTML templates. They are nothing else than regular 
text document templates, but require a different extension and/or MIME 
type, because different actions have to be assigned to them in desktop 
systems.

Since the content of these documents is an OASIS Open Office document, 
it seems to be reasonable that the MIME type of these documents also is 
an "application/x-vnd.oasis.openoffice.*" string.

There was already a consensus that the Open Office base specification 
should not contain these application specific MIME types, because this 
would require a revision of the specification whenever a new MIME 
type/extension is requested.

There seem to be (at least) the following options:

a) The TC itself maintains application specific MIME types and 
extensions, and publishes them in a separate document.
b) The TC recommends to use vendor specific MIME types and extensions 
for for application specific document types.
c) The TC recommends to use the apropriate basic MIME type specified in 
the OASIS Open Office specification together with a vendor specific 
extension.
d) The TC does not add a recomendation to the specification document, 
but leaves it up to the vendors which solution (including b and c above) 
is best for their purpose.

An independent MIME type related issue is whether master documents as 
specified in the OpenOffice.org proposal are a document type of its own, 
and if so, whether its MIME type/extension should be added to the base 
specification.

Best regards

Michael