Scripting Media Types

[Bruce Lilly]

On Sat February 12 2005 16:02, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:

> Well, my concern is that it would be misleading to suggest people use
> application/ecmascript instead of text/ecmascript if the overwhelming
> majority can't do that at the moment

Why do you say that it would be misleading to suggest use of a
type registered in an appropriate part of the tree rather than to
use an unregistered tag which impinges on part of the IANA tree
namespace which is inappropriate for the content; isn't that
exactly the point of a registration -- to provide an appropriate
standardized tag?

> , so my preferred approach is to 
> register these types now as COMMON (or LIMITED USE) and update the
> registration later to consider them OBSOLETE when support for the
> alternate types is more widespread.

I suspect that if an inappropriate registry is made, regardless of
type, that usage patterns will change little, even if an appropriate
registration is made at the same time.  Once a registration is made,
applications will need to support it, if only for backwards
compatibility with archived content.  What the is the incentive for
migration to the appropriate type?  There is a tendency (inertia)
against change; change usually doesn't happen unless there is some
sort of penalty associated with not changing; if both appropriate
and inappropriate types are registered and therefore supported,
where is that motivating penalty?

> But I guess pointing out in the 
> document that marking those types as obsolete does not mean there is
> much wrong if these types are used/implemented for reasons of
> backwards-compatibility would avoid confusion.

It would remove incentive to change to an appropriate tag.

> Bruce, would registering these types as OBSOLETE be acceptable to you?

I'm not the arbiter of type registrations, but it seems to me that
such a registration would entail unnecessary work for IANA and for
implementers, would further dilute the distinction between text and
other types, and would be counterproductive in terms of moving
already non-conforming applications to an appropriate media type
tag usage.  Given those three types of harm that would likely be
caused, I would only support such registration as a last resort,
and I am not convinced that there is any need to resort to such a
measure.  What is wrong with simply registering appropriate types
and encouraging implementers to migrate to those types?