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Subject: DOCBOOK: Re: DocBook filename extension
>>>>> Brian Lalonde <brianiacus@yahoo.com>: > From: "Steinar Bang" <sb@dod.no> >>>>>>> Brian Lalonde <brianiacus@yahoo.com>: >>> When is a MIME type more useful than an extension? >> As to "When", my answer is "always". > Not so! > Proof by existance counterexamples: > 1. text/plain .txt .c .h .pl .pod .java .doc etc This is because no-one has bothered to register the source formats .c, .h, .pl, and .java MIME types yet. They probably should be text/* subtypes. Maybe there hasn't been a use for them yet? I suspect there will be a use for them when/if file systems show up, that have the IANA meduia types type system built in. (A counter-counter-example: is a .h file a C or a C++ file?) POD should probably have been registered as text/pod. I hope you don't send .doc as text/plain. That would make things awfully messy in both MUAs and web browsers. > 2. application/octect-stream .exe .class .bin application/octet-stream, means basically: transfer "this file without changing it in any way" (reversible transfer encodings are ok). > 3. XSL: text/xml or text/xsl? I think XSL should have a MIME type of its own. Others think otherwise, because they think all XML can be handled by parsing into a DOM and applying the appropriate magic. > 4. text/xml files (XSL, RSS, et al may not include a !DOCTYPE) I personally think that all well defined XML formats should have a media type of their own. Others disagree. See <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3023.html> for the definition of some XML and XML releated formats. > 5. The degenerate application/* (which is not always centralized) Proper media types are always centralized and can be found here: <http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/media-types> Experimental media types are prefixed with "x-". Illegal media types are unregistered media types that aren't prefixed with "x-". > Aside from .doc, I cannot think of any examples of MIME types that > provide greater specificity than extensions. That's probably because you weren't trying too hard. :-) .idl is one (there are more than one "Interface Definition Language") .mdl for: - Digitrakker Music Module - Rational Rose models - Quake model files - 3D design plus module - Simulink Simulation Model - CA-Compete! Spreadsheet Please see <http://filext.com/> for many examples. > Neither system is perfect, but extensions, in my experience anyway, > have been less vague. Only IANA media types can IMO be called a system. The other is a lot of unconnected ad-hoc bindings of file name extensions to files used by different applications. [snip!] > Again, aside from .doc, I cannot think of other significant examples > of extension collision. MIME's structured, categorized approach is > attractive, Yes. > but there seem to be too many generalizations (for me, anyway), Like eg. what? > and inconsistencies Hm... what inconsistencies? > (I can never remember which MIME types use ".vnd", or "x-"). I thought .vnd was for undocumented formats, but the registry has dem for a latex format, so then I guess I don't understand what it's for. x- is for "experimental".
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