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/
