Keith Devens .com

s/experimental/extension/

The x isn't there for "experimental", it's there for extension, because the x-www-form-encoded mime type is a non-standard extension and has never actually been standardized by whomever standardizes mime extentions. It's only a de-facto standard.

Update: Joe from bitworking.com kindly pointed out that I was full of crap and should have checked the RFC.

Update again: Actually, I may not be so full of crap. I just checked the first MIME RFC RFC 2045 section 5, which says:

In the future, more top-level types may be defined only by a standards-track extension to this standard. If another top-level type is to be used for any reason, it must be given a name starting with "X-" to indicate its non-standard status and to avoid a potential conflict with a future official name.

In fact even the grammar productions say "extension"! Also, the part of RFC 2048 Joe quotes (he quotes from the draft which wound up being RFC 2048, I think) refers specifically to "x." content types

For convenience and symmetry with this registration scheme, mediatype names with "x." as the first facet may be used for the same purposes for which names starting in "x-" are normally used. These types are unregistered, experimental, and should be used only with the active agreement of the parties exchanging them.

However, with the simplified registration procedures described above for vendor and personal trees, it should rarely, if ever, be necessary to use unregistered experimental types, and as such use of both "x-" and "x." forms is discouraged.

but then compares them to "x-" headers and says they're used for the same purpose... so at best, both "x." and "x-" are both extensions and experimental types.

Permalink | 2 Comments | Tags: Programming | id 3308

23:24 (utc-5)
edited: 2003-01-12 13:02 (utc-5)