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
