Product: MIME architecture for the Web

Goals

The goal of this work is to improve the compatibility between Mime as specified and used for the World Wide Web, and MIME as specified and used for email and other purposes.

Success criteria

• The TAG will publish (or ensure that others have published) analyses explaining the areas in which use of Mime on the Web is proving problematic, and will suggest concrete steps for resolving problems where they are found.
• The TAG will liase with the IETF and other concerned parties to resolve these issues
• The TAG, working with others as appropriate, will document the solutions that are agreed by the community, and will highlight areas in which unresolved problems remain.

Key deliverables with dates:

• 31 December 2011: Final TAG Report on MIME architecture, most likely in the form of an Internet Draft

Note that drafts are being published at: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-masinter-mime-web-info

Schedules:

• 30 September 2011: Report finalized
• 30 September 2011: TAG achieves success criteria set out above, and identifies further goals and next steps, if any

TAG Members assigned:

• Larry Masinter is preparing the TAG's analysis in the form of an IETF draft
• Jeni Tennison is leading the analysis of concerns relating to frament ID semantics

TAG Issues, Actions and Tracker Product Page

Issues

• ISSUE-1: Should W3C WGs define their own media types?
• ISSUE-9: Why does the Web use mime types and not URIs?
• ISSUE-66: The role of MIME in the Web Architecture

Actions

• ACTION-233: Report back from IETF/HTML liason meeting in March regarding MIME type override
• ACTION-424: Start discussion on www-tag about additional finding/web architecture around MIME types in web architecture, updating existing findings (Larry Masinter)
• ACTION-425: Draft updated MIME finding(s), with help from DanA, based on www-tag discussion (Larry Masinter)
• ACTION-458: Schedule discussion of followup actions for TAG to coordinate with IETF on MIME-type related activities (Noah Mendelsohn)
• ACTION-472: Update the mime-draft based on comments & review (Larry Masinter)
• ACTION-543: Propose addition to MIME/Web draft to discuss sem-web use of fragids not grounded in media type (Jeni Tennison)
• ACTION-526: Do first draft product stuff for MIME and related core web mechanisms (Noah Mendelsohn)