Excerpts from bcc: 25-Jun-94 Re: Initial comments on dra.. =>
ietf-822(_at_)dimacs(_dot_)rutge (3546)
The grammars for text-type, message-type, application-type, et al.
unnecessarily and incorrectly restrict the possible values of the
Content-Type field. For example, the text-type nonterminal prohibits
the value of the "charset=" parameter from being quoted and prohibits
parmeters other than "charset=". They should all be removed.
Sigh. If there's one thing I've really come to HATE in the MIME process
it is the formal grammar. I will make a pass at improving it and post a
new Internet-Draft soon. -- Nathaniel
Maybe I spoke too soon. Upon further reflection, I'm really not sure
what the right way to fix this would be. We could either remove the
specific grammatical entities for text-type, etc. -- probably my
preference -- or we could add a more complete grammar, along the lines
of
text-type := "text" "/" text-subtype *text-param
text-param := (";" "charset" "=" charset) / parameter
text-subtype := "plain" / extension-token
But even the above doesn't address John's concern about quoted
parameters, and it is already getting way too complicated for my taste.
Any other suggestions? -- NB