Registration of media type text/vcard

[Julian Reschke]

On 25.08.2010 17:58, Simon Perreault wrote:
> On 2010-08-25 11:48, Paul Libbrecht wrote:
>> What is the advantage of having a charset parameter?
>
> You mean for vCard 4 or for MIME?
>
> For vCard 4, we felt that MIME came with a charset parameter and we had
> no power to way "this parameter MUST NOT not be applied to vCard 4".
> That's why we say instead that if it is used, then it MUST say UTF-8.

I'll defer the question whether a text/* type that restricts charset to 
specific values is a good idea to the real experts on this.

Maybe an alternative would be to let the charset parameter work as 
designed, and simply state that the only encoding required to be 
understood is UTF-8?

>>  From your registration the parameter brings no information (am I
>> right?). So why include it and not simply rely on the Byte-Order-Mark?
>
> vCard 4 does not use a BOM. vCard 4 is always UTF-8, period.

That's kind of clear from the ABNF in section 3.2.

That being said, there are text editors that *will* add a BOM, and I'd 
be surprised if all recipients treat this as malformed. So there's a 
potential interop problem.

This might be addressed by repeating this in prose in 3.4, and also by 
having test cases.

> We do not wish to "include" the charset parameter. If it is possible to
> "exclude" it, that would make us happy.

As far as I can tell, you'd need to use application/* instead.

Best regards, Julian