Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 11-Feb-93 new MIME draft Mark
Crispin(_at_)cac(_dot_)washing (360*)
I see that the ``NAME'' parameter has been renamed to ``FILENAME''. What was
the purpose of this?
I'm concerned, since while it is recommended that NAME also be recognized, old
software isn't going to recognize the new preferred FILENAME nomenclature.
Unless there is a special reason for this other than esthetics, I would like
to see this reconsidered.
Here's the problem. There were TWO subtypes that had a "name" parameter
in RFC 1341. application/octet-stream used it for a suggested file
name, and message/external-body used it for the existing name of data
(not necessarily, but probably in a file) to be retrieved. Now, several
people pointed out that the former semantics for "name" would be highly
desirable for ALL content-types, not just application/octet-stream. But
this led to a fairly obvious "name" conflict. The best solution I was
able to see was to rename one of them and make it applicable to all
content-types, but if there's a better solution I'd love to hear it...
-- Nathaniel