Yes, there is a potential for confusion between the term Media Type in our
Media Name standard and MIME Media Types, but...
The term "media" to mean something to write on has been around a lot longer
than the IETF and MIME, so I think the best approach to avoid the obvious
confusion is to put the adjective MIME in front of media when we are talking
about document-format values and use the term "media type", i.e., MIME Media
Type to distinguish it from Media Type (stationery, transparency, etc.),
OK?
Also the attribute "media-type" is a member attribute of the "media-col"
attribute in the approved PWG IEEE-ISTO Production Printing Extension.
Also the attribute MediaType is a parameter in the almost approved UPnP
BasicPrint Template.
Here is the current text in IPP RFC 2911 about the subject (which I think
avoids any confusion):
4.1.9 'mimeMediaType'
The 'mimeMediaType' attribute syntax is the Internet Media Type (sometimes
called MIME type) as defined by RFC 2046 [RFC2046] and registered according
to the procedures of RFC 2048 [RFC2048] for identifying a document format.
The value MAY include a charset, or other, parameter, depending on the
specification of the Media Type in the IANA Registry [IANA-MT]. Although
most other IPP syntax types allow for only lower-cased values, this syntax
type allows for mixed-case values which are case-insensitive.
"document-format" (mimeMediaType):
The client OPTIONALLY supplies this attribute. The Printer object MUST
support this attribute. The value of this attribute identifies the format
of the supplied document data. The following cases exist:
4.4.21 document-format-default (mimeMediaType)
This REQUIRED Printer attribute identifies the document format that the
Printer object has been configured to assume if the client does not supply a
"document-format" operation attribute in any of the operation requests that
supply document data. The standard values for this attribute are Internet
Media types (sometimes called MIME types). For further details see the
description of the 'mimeMediaType' attribute syntax in Section 4.1.9.
Bottom line: I don't think we should change our Media Type terminology in
our Media Names Standard.
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Kugler [mailto:kugler at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2001 08:36
Cc: ipp at pwg.org; upd at pwg.org; pwg at pwg.org
Subject: Re: PWG> Fwd: RE: UPD> Re: IPP> MED - Media Standardized Names
Draft D0.4 down- loaded
I'm a little concerned about overloading the term Media Type for envelop,
different kinds of paper, etc., since we already use that in
document-format values (e.g., text/plain, application/postscript, etc.).
-Carl