21268 2013-03-13 16:24:46 +0000 Define MIME type terminology 2019-03-29 22:40:33 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified WHATWG MIME unspecified All All RESOLVED FIXED P2 normal Unsorted 1 gphemsley gphemsley annevk d ian mike simon.sapin sideshowbarker+mimespec oldest_to_newest 84347 0 gphemsley 2013-03-13 16:24:46 +0000 If a file is characterized as "text/html;charset=utf-8", we need to make sure we have terminology for the following subsets of that: * "text/html;charset=utf-8" * "text/html" * "text" At the moment, the term "MIME type" (or "type") can apply to any one of those. 84348 1 simon.sapin 2013-03-13 16:26:21 +0000 I’ve been using "MIME type with parameters" for the first one. 84350 2 annevk 2013-03-13 16:29:49 +0000 As far as I know we never needed a term for "text". I recommend treating "text/html" as a single entity. "MIME type" and "MIME type with parameters" works for me. 84356 3 gphemsley 2013-03-13 17:16:14 +0000 (In reply to comment #2) > As far as I know we never needed a term for "text". I recommend treating > "text/html" as a single entity. Such a term is used extensively in the MIME Sniffing spec, and I would guess elsewhere. Categories like "text", "image", "audio", "video", and "application" make it easier to group similar file formats, and I don't think it would be wise to treat "text/html" as a single atomic entity when it is clearly made up of two separate parts ("type" and "subtype"). > "MIME type" and "MIME type with parameters" works for me. I'm fine with that, too, but I think earlier discussion indicated that existing usage might be such that "MIME type" includes parameters (at least in some cases). If we want to buck that trend, that's OK by me. But I also want to reiterate that "MIME type" would then be an entity divisible into "type" and "subtype" parts. By extension, then, "MIME type with parameters" would be made up of "type", "subtype", and "parameters" parts. (And both would also have additional separator characters involved, like slashes and semicolons.) 84384 4 ian 2013-03-14 00:44:54 +0000 Why do we care about type vs subtype as separate referenceable parts? Shouldn't we just treat the whole thing as an opaque string? 84385 5 ian 2013-03-14 00:45:28 +0000 Sorry, missed the part where you said you needed that specifically for the sniffing spec. 129715 6 d 2019-03-29 22:40:33 +0000 This now exists: https://mimesniff.spec.whatwg.org/#mime-type-representation : - MIME type, or valid MIME type string - MIME type's essence - MIME type's type