MIME media types

This document lists a few things that are nice to know about MIME media types, as I understand them.
NOTE: THis document was written in 1996, and is badly outdated!

Official registration procedures

MIME types should be registered with IANA.

The rules for registration are in the internet-draft "draft-ietf-822ext-mime-reg-04.txt", which was approved as Best Current Practice on August 23, 1996.

What IANA thinks is registered at any time can be found in the IANA FTP archive. The directories here contain the actual application forms for registration.

The discussion list for MIME types is currently hosted at ietf-types@alvestrand.no. You can subscribe by writing to ietf-types-request@alvestrand.no and including the word "subscribe" in the BODY of the message.
The list should also be reachable as ietf-types@iana.org; this address should be stable "forever", no matter where the physical list is hosted.

Archives of the list are found at http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-types.
There is no FAQ (apart from this Web page), and the list is not gatewayed to any Usenet newsgroup (that I know of).

Issues to be aware of in type registration

When registering a new type, you ought to be aware of the following: Because the process used to be a bit difficult, a lot of "x-" types have been registered.

MIME conversion tables to X.400

Conversions between MIME and X.400 should be done according to RFC 1494.

The IANA registry of such conversions is part of the file media-types, according to RFC 1700.


Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no
Last modified: Wed Oct 16 21:42:37 1996