Registration of media type text/vcard

[Ned Freed]

> 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".

Not sure where you got this idea, but in any case, it's incorrect. From RFC
2046, section 4.1:

   A "charset" parameter may be used to
   indicate the character set of the body text for "text" subtypes,
   notably including the subtype "text/plain", which is a generic
   subtype for plain text.

Note the "may". May != must. Indeed, may != should. So there is no reason why
you cannot say "optonal parameters: none" for thie media type.

THere's no shortages of "running code" here either - several type subtypes have
been registered without a charset parameter (rtf, rtp-enc-aescm128,
vnd.DMClientScript, etc.).

> That's why we say instead that if it is used, then it MUST say UTF-8.

While this approach does not violate any restriction I'm aware of, it
definitely violates the MIME design philosophy, which was to avoid unnnecessary
silly states.

				Ned