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  • Associating .texi files to the media type text/prs.texi?

    From Charles Plessy@21:1/5 to All on Mon Feb 3 23:10:01 2025
    Hello everybody,

    I am preparing the update of `/etc/mime.types` for the Trixie release.

    A new media type, text/prs.texi, declares association with the file
    extension `texi`. On the other hand, the association between the
    Texinfo format and `.texi` files has never been declared to the IANA.
    As of today, Debian systems associate Texinfo files with the media type `application/x-texinfo`.

    I am in very strong favor in sticking as strictly as possible to the
    IANA declarations for the content of `/etc/mime.types`. I have
    confirmed by myself that IANA declarations are very easy today, by
    registering application/vnd.debian.binary-package and
    text/vnd.debian.copyright a dozen years ago. The declaration form is
    here: <https://www.iana.org/form/media-types>.

    The IANA declarations are not specifix to UNIX and the IANA does not
    specify the contents `/etc/mime.types`. This file is also not the only
    way on Debian systems to determine the media type of a file. Similar
    and more powerful alternatives are provided by the `file` and `shared-mime-info` packages for instance.

    One serious limitation with `/etc/mime.types` is that its contents must
    be adjusted to the file that most tools that parse it are not able to
    handle the case where two media types are associated with the same
    extension. And with the growth and ageing of computing, this is
    increasingly a problem. So when this case arises I need to make a
    choice and keep only one association. This is documented in the README
    file of the `media-types` package. (<https://salsa.debian.org/debian/media-types#removal-of-duplicated-file-extensions>)

    In principle I want to give precedence to declared types over undeclared
    ones. As I wrote above, applications using `/etc/mime.types` are using
    the simplest and most limited way to determine file media types, and
    errors can happen. I wonder if having Texinfo files presented as `text/prs.texi` from time to time would be such a bad thing, especially
    that they are all `text/*` after all. Web browsers would still offer to
    users the possibility to open the file with a text editor. And the
    situation could be easily reverted by somebody declaring `text/texinfo`
    to the IANA.

    So please let me know if you think that something would really break if
    I would associate text/prs.texi to texi files.

    Have a nice day,

    Charles

    --
    Charles Plessy Nagahama, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan
    Debian Med packaging team http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Tooting from work, https://fediscience.org/@charles_plessy Tooting from home, https://framapiaf.org/@charles_plessy

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  • From Simon Josefsson@21:1/5 to Charles Plessy on Tue Feb 4 00:20:01 2025
    Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:

    And the situation could be easily reverted by somebody declaring `text/texinfo` to the IANA.

    I did so now.

    /Simon

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  • From Simon Josefsson@21:1/5 to Simon Josefsson on Wed Apr 23 10:50:01 2025
    Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes:

    Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:

    And the situation could be easily reverted by somebody declaring
    `text/texinfo` to the IANA.

    I did so now.

    There was a bunch of discussion back and forth with IANA and eventually application/texinfo was registered:

    https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml#application https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/texinfo

    There were some charset concerns about text/texinfo (that I never
    managed to understand myself, so I can't confirm if they weren't just imaginary), and some people thought application/x-texinfo was more
    wide-spread than text/x-texinfo.

    I didn't understand from your first e-mail what your thinking around GNU Texinfo format for the mime.types registry is? As far as I can tell
    there is a proper application/x-texinfo entry already? I tried reading
    about the text/prs.texi format on

    https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/prs.texi

    but the links aren't working. Is there any software that supports that
    format in Debian?

    My preference would be to have a application/texinfo associated with
    *.texi and *.texinfo. If there is some preference mechanism in place, I
    would prefer that application/texinfo is before text/prs.texi.

    Of course, I see no reason to remove support for application/x-texinfo,
    it should from now on just be an alias for application/texinfo.

    /Simon

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  • From Jakub Wilk@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 23 11:50:01 2025
    * Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>, 2025-04-23 10:45: >https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/texinfo

    The "Published specification" link is: https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/texinfo.html#Info-Format-Specification

    This points to the chapter about the Info format, which is very
    different than Texinfo. I recommend removing the anchor from that URL.

    --
    Jakub Wilk

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  • From Simon Josefsson@21:1/5 to Jakub Wilk on Wed Apr 23 12:30:01 2025
    Jakub Wilk <jwilk@jwilk.net> writes:

    * Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>, 2025-04-23 10:45:
    https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/texinfo

    The "Published specification" link is: https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/texinfo.html#Info-Format-Specification

    This points to the chapter about the Info format, which is very
    different than Texinfo. I recommend removing the anchor from that URL.

    Oops, thank you! I've asked IANA to implement your suggestion.

    /Simon

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  • From Charles Plessy@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 26 01:10:01 2025
    Le Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 10:45:18AM +0200, Simon Josefsson a écrit :

    There was a bunch of discussion back and forth with IANA and eventually application/texinfo was registered:

    Thanks a lot!

    I didn't understand from your first e-mail what your thinking around GNU Texinfo format for the mime.types registry is? As far as I can tell
    there is a proper application/x-texinfo entry already? I tried reading
    about the text/prs.texi format on

    https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/prs.texi

    but the links aren't working. Is there any software that supports that format in Debian?

    In /etc/mime.types, I try to remove unofficial types, and give preference
    to the ones declared to the IANA for the association with file extensions.

    In the case of the .texi extension it was recently declared by text/prs.texi and if I follow my own policy, then I would need to de-associate it from text/x-texinfo regardless the relevance of text/prs.texi. Duplicate entries in /etc/mime.types are not supported by some software including web browsers.

    So what I did was to refrain from adding text/prs.texi for Trixie and waited for application/texinfo to be registered. Now I can update the package (maybe not for Trixie) so that application/texinfo takes over text/x-texinfo.

    I hope it explains better.

    Thanks again!

    Charles

    --
    Charles Plessy Nagahama, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan
    Debian Med packaging team http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Tooting from home https://framapiaf.org/@charles_plessy
    - You do not have my permission to use this email to train an AI -

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  • From Simon Josefsson@21:1/5 to Charles Plessy on Sat Apr 26 20:30:01 2025
    Thanks for explaining!

    Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:

    Duplicate entries in /etc/mime.types are not supported by some
    software including web browsers.

    This was the part I was missing for my understanding. That seems like a
    bug. Is progress on fixing that tracked anywhere? Is /etc/mime.types
    still the state of the art for MIME mappings, or should applications
    better use some other method?

    /Simon

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  • From Charles Plessy@21:1/5 to All on Sun Apr 27 03:00:01 2025
    Le Sat, Apr 26, 2025 at 08:20:08PM +0200, Simon Josefsson a écrit :

    Is /etc/mime.types still the state of the art for MIME mappings, or should applications better use some other method?

    Hi Simon,

    using /etc/mime.types is not the state of the art for detecting the media type of a file. It is quite ancient and tools that use it tend to rely on the fact that it is not going to evolve. For this reason the following limitations are unlikely to be addressed:

    - there is an implicit promise that there will be no file extension duplicates.
    - case-sensitivity of file extensions is not specified.
    - alternatives to file extensions for media type detection are not provided.

    By the way, the media-types package that distributes /etc/mime.types (and nothing else), is Priority: standard and therefore software that use unconditionally must depend on it.

    There are two main alternatives:

    - the file command and its libmagic library, which can probe a file's contents
    for magic numbers and more complex patterns.

    - the xdg-mime that queries the shared-mime-info database for file extension
    and magic number matches.

    What /etc/mime.types provides that the two alternatives do not is the exhaustive list of IANA-approved media types including those that are not declaring an extension. I do not know how useful it is and would be pleased
    to hear about applications. (Because maintaining that list is tedious).

    In conclusion, my advice is not not use /etc/mime.types unless the alternatives have serious drawbacks.

    Have a nice day,

    --
    Charles Plessy Nagahama, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan
    Debian Med packaging team http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Tooting from home https://framapiaf.org/@charles_plessy
    - You do not have my permission to use this email to train an AI -

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