Re: Plain Text

From: John Cowan (cowan@locke.ccil.org)
Date: Tue Jul 06 1999 - 11:45:17 EDT


Frank da Cruz wrote:

> I most emphatically do not want to define a MIME type, because MIME will
> disappear some day but Unicode will last forever (if we do it right).

Technically, "MIME types" are called "media types", and what they
really are is named interchange formats. You *are* trying to develop an
interchange format; making it a media type requires only finding a name
and filling out a short registration form.

As I said in an earlier message, MIME rules provide a strong case
for distinguishing between "text/plain" and "application/character-stream",
(where "application" here really means "other" i.e. "catchall".)
The former must be composed of lines with a maximum length of
(IIRC) 998 characters; the latter has no such restrictions.

Text/plain could still include both reflowable and preformatted
text, but I believe the weight of history is in favor of using that
term for preformatted text only.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
   Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! / Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,
   Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
			-- Coleridge / Politzer



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:48 EDT