Re: application/x-dvi

["Roy T. Fielding" <fi...@liege.ICS.UCI.EDU>]

> As I understand it, there are certain "standard" MIME types and subtypes 
> as documented in RFC 1521.  Any time you come up with a new type or subtype 
> that isn't one of the standard documented MIME types, convention is to 
> preface the identifier with "x-" to denote it as "experimental" or something.
> Since dvi is probably not listed in RFC 1521, it has a subtype of x-dvi 
> instead of just dvi.

Yep, that is correct.  It also doesn't work, because no program should
ever be distributed which uses "experimental" types.  The whole x- fetish
is a failed mechanism for avoiding name collision in mail headers --
it never worked in RFC 822 and I haven't the faintest notion why they
were silly enough to repeat the same mistake for MIME content types.

> This is also why the MIME type for server parsed html is
> text/x-server-parsed-html instead of text/server-parsed-html.

Yes, but it should have been the latter (or, better yet, server/parsed-html).
As far as I'm concerned, there is no value in using the "x-" prefix for
anything.

......Roy

Re: application/x-dvi

[Nathan Schrenk <ns...@neog.com>]

On Wed, 6 Dec 1995, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> > This is also why the MIME type for server parsed html is
> > text/x-server-parsed-html instead of text/server-parsed-html.
> 
> Yes, but it should have been the latter (or, better yet, server/parsed-html).
> As far as I'm concerned, there is no value in using the "x-" prefix for
> anything.

For the record, I was just describing why things are the way they are, not 
advocating the use of the "x-" prefix anywhere.  It does seem silly to 
end up with "experimental" content types in widespread use.

> ......Roy

Nathan

--
Nathan Schrenk						nschrenk@neog.com
Neoglyphics Media Corp.                              http://www.neog.com/