Philipp Hoschka (ph@w3.org)
Thu, 12 Aug 1999 11:01:29 +0200
i think the following may provide what is needed in terms
of MIME registration of wav files - not
sure whether this was mentioned in the discussion, and thus wanted
to bring it up
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2361.txt
Network Working Group E. Fleischman
Request for Comments: 2361 Microsoft Corporation
Category: Informational June 1998
WAVE and AVI Codec Registries
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
...
1 Introduction
Internet-oriented multimedia applications reference multimedia
content via predefined mechanisms (e.g., [2]). In the general case,
this content was created primarily for the use of these Internet-
oriented applications. Unfortunately, this Internet-oriented
multimedia content represents a small minority of the total amount of
multimedia content that has been created to date.
For this reason, a growing interest is forming in establishing
mechanisms by which the repertoire of multimedia content available to
Internet-oriented applications(e.g., for RTSP [3]) may be greatly
extended to include multimedia content that has been created outside
of distinctly Internet contexts. For this to occur, a mechanism must
be created for Internet protocols (e.g., [1], [3], [4]) to be able to
identify the codecs by which this so-called "traditional" multimedia
content has been encoded.
Unfortunately, several distinct encoding systems exist for
traditional multimedia content. Each system has its own registry to
ensure unique and stable codec identifications within that system.
Perhaps the best known of these registries are Microsoft (for WAVE
and AVI content) and Apple (for QuickTime content).
The purpose of this paper is to establish a mechanism by which codecs
registered within Microsoft's WAVE and AVI Registries may be
referenced within the IANA Namespace by Internet applications.
Graham Klyne wrote:
>
> I have a small problem with this proposed MIME subtype registration.
>
> The registration seems to be rather vague about whether it is to be the
> definitive definition of 'audio/wav'; from section 1:
>
> Because the Waveform Audio File format is not well-defined and has
> not undergone a process of standardization, this document briefly
> defines the format that will be supported by VPIM version 3. For
> more detailed information, refer to the specification.
>
> I think it is important that the audio/wav registration clearly defines
> what constitutes audio/wav (either directly, or by reference). The
> reference to VPIM V3 support merely confuses the issue. Remember, the MIME
> registry is available to all applications, and should provide a general
> basis for interoperability.
>
> I think there are two possible cases here:
>
> (1) the registration document does indeed completely define audio/wav, in
> which case the references to Microsoft's platform SDK should be clearly
> flagged as being non-definitive for this purpose (e.g. not offered as a
> source of "more detailed information")
>
> (2) the platform SDK provides the definitive specification, in which case a
> proper citation to a publicly accessible document should be provided.
>
> (Of the two cases here, I prefer the first because I think it's more
> satisfactory if protocol standard specifications can stand without
> reference to non-IETF documents.)
>
> #g
>
> ------------
> Graham Klyne
> (GK@ACM.ORG)
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