Re: PROV-ISSUE-573 (mime-type): mime type registration feedback [prov-n]

On 15/10/2012 23:21, Provenance Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:
> PROV-ISSUE-573 (mime-type): mime type registration feedback [prov-n]
>
> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/573
>
> Raised by: Luc Moreau
> On product: prov-n
>
> For the record, feedback to the mime type registration can be found:
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-prov-comments/2012Jul/0017.html

These are useful comments.  My thoughts:

...

[[
 >Optional parameters:
 >charset — this parameter is mandatory. The value of charset is always UTF-8.

This seems to need work, it's not optional if it is mandatory, is it.
And The second sentence is a statement of fact that is easily contr-
dicted by content.
]]

The "Optional" here is part of the template.  The "mandatory" use of 
charset=UTF-8 is per recommendation from MIME experts.  I agree it's confusing.

Maybe say:  "charset - this parameter SHOULD always be included, and its value 
MUST be UTF-8".

...

[[
 >Encoding considerations:
 >The syntax of PROV-N is expressed over code points in Unicode
 >[UNICODE5]. The encoding is always UTF-8 [UTF-8].
 >Unicode code points may also be expressed using an \uXXXX (U+0 to
 >U+FFFF) or \UXXXXXXXX syntax (for U+10000 onwards) where X is a
 >hexadecimal digit [0-9A-F]

This field should contain one of the values in RFC 4288 or its successor
if that has been approved already, like "binary".
]]

I missed this previously.  Per http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4288#section-4.8, I 
think this should be:

"Encoding considerations: 8bit"

I note that existing registrations also discuss the content, so the existing 
text /might/ be retained (modulo updating the Unicode reference)

...

[[
 >Applications which use this media type:
 >No widely deployed applications are known to use this media type. It may
 >be used by some web services and clients consuming their data.

You can remove the first sentence, this is to give people an idea
whether this is for Word processing applications or cryptographic
key exchange systems or whatever.
]]

Maybe something like:

"Applications which use this media type:
May be used by any application for publishing provenance information.  This 
format is designed to be a human-readable form of provenance, and it is 
anticipated that RDF or XML formats will be used for exchanging provenance 
between applications."

...

[[
 >Person & email address to contact for further information:
 >public-prov-comments@w3.org

This does not qualify as "Person & email address".
]]

Hmmm... I can't see any explicit requirement in RFC 4288 that the contact must 
be a person.  I might try:

"W3C (provenance working group) <public-prov-comments@w3.org>"

I also see that in an earlier email to the IETF review list, Ivan is mentioned 
as a contact person.

...

>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-prov-comments/2012Jul/0018.html

This comment appears to ask for text of the template to be included in the 
submission, which AFAICT it was.  I'm not seeing any further response needed.

...

>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-prov-comments/2012Jul/0019.html

I think the reference to an old Unicode spec should be changed (and maybe add 
"or sucessor"?)

(I note that the UTF-8 spec (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3629) suffers from 
the same problem (actually refers to Unicode V4).)

..

#g

Received on Sunday, 21 October 2012 12:50:51 UTC