- Anything registered must have a published specification, so that
anyone can write a viewer for that format and distribute it freely
if he wants to.
I think that's a completely unworkable policy. We need names for
proprietary formats, too.
While I wish that all MIME types would have published definitions, I agree with
Steve that this is an unworkable policy in the current climate.
I was also of the understanding that this was *not* IANA's policy regarding
registrations. RFC 1590 says:
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3.2 Requirements for a Published Specification
Issue: Content-Type registration requires an RFC specifying the data
format or a reference to a published specification of the data
stream. This requirement may be overly restrictive for the use of
content-type registration for file attachments and distribution
because a public specification may not be available for a number of
widely used and exchanged objects.
Comment: MIME required the documentation of a specific content-type
to allow the unambiguous identification of a defined type. This
intent is met by the identification of a particular software package
and version when registering the content-type and is allowed for
registration. The appropriateness of using a Media Type with an
unavailable specification should not be an issue in the registration.
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I have some problems with parts of 1590, but I think this section
is pretty reasonable.
Keith