> ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@xxxxxx> > To: "Yaakov Stein" <yaakov_s@xxxxxxx> > Cc: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx>; "ietf" <ietf@xxxxxxxx> > Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 6:07 PM > > On 2011-11-26 21:52, Yaakov Stein wrote: > > >> That leaves ASCII, a few forms of PDF, and RFC 5198-conforming UTF-8. > > >> That wouldn't bother me much, but be careful what you wish form. > > > > > > What we have been told is that the rationale behind the use of ASCII and > several other formats > > > is that they will remain readable on devices that will be used X years > hence. > > > > > > ASCII is already unreadable on many popular devices > > > and in a few years will be no better than old versions of word. > > > ... > > Can we *please* distinguish between the character encoding we use > > (US-ASCII) and the file format (text/plain)? > > > > If *we* don't get this right, how can we expect anybody else to get it > > right? > You will be aware of the recent threads on apps-discuss about MIME types (of > which the text/plain you mention is one) which concluded, AFAICS, that there is > no rationale why a (top level) type should or should not exist, there are no > criteria for creating new ones, that it is impossible to draw up a taxonomy of > types because there is no underlying logic in any dimension. And I would have to characterize all of that as 100% grade A hogwash. I'm not going to bother refuting each point since even if this nonsense were true top-level type rules, or the lack thereof are completely irreleant to the matter at hand. But feel free to read the thread if you want the real story. Ned _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf