Content-Type and wss-swa-profile-1.0-draft-11

[Bruce Rich <brich@us.ibm.com>]

According to RFC 2045, the parameters
on a Content-Type are of the form

parameter := attribute "=" value

     attribute := token
                  ; Matching
of attributes
                  ; is ALWAYS
case-insensitive.

     value := token / quoted-string

     token := 1*<any (US-ASCII) CHAR except SPACE, CTLs,
                 or tspecials>

     tspecials :=  "(" / ")" / "<"
/ ">" / "@" /
                   ","
/ ";" / ":" / "\" / <">
                   "/"
/ "[" / "]" / "?" / "="
                   ; Must
be in quoted-string,
                   ; to use
within parameter values

Yet Example 4.3.6 in the latest SwA
profile draft shows a Content-Type of
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="arggh"
type=text/xml

Why is it that type=text/xml on a Content-Type:
multipart/related is not forced to be type="text/xml" ?
The forward slash character is clearly
part of the tspecials.

It is true that RFC 2112 would seem
to indicate in its BNF that an unquoted type string is permissable,
but its example shows usage with a quoted
type string (type="Text/x-Okie")
and an even stronger argument might
be made by considering agents that do not understand
multipart/related, default to multipart/mixed
and bomb on the unquoted type=x/y parameter.

Bruce A Rich
brich@us.ibm.com

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