Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 29-Apr-91 a plea for simplicity Mark
Crispin(_at_)tomobiki-ch (4216)
(2) Elimination of the version stuff. Versions are bogus. Invariably,
there is one that works, and none of the others do, and hence the
version is really a constant
I know of several systems where this is not the case. This is actually,
as far as I can tell, the only living baby that Mark wants to throw out
with the bathwater...
I also think that the idea that our current version of "text" works
"well enough" is a very USA-centric view. However reverting to a
content-type of "text" with a place to specify character sets (either in
a separate header or as part of content-type) is a clear and simple
solution. What makes it messy, as we have seen, is the enumeration of
what character sets are "standard".
Beyond that, I think that Mark's proposed simplification consists mostly
of eliminating recursive content-types (which I'm all for) and
eliminating the list of content-types, which I think would be a shame
just because most of them ain't all that controversial, and it is really
nice if people can use the same names for the same things...