Bug 21680

Summary:	text/x-vcard should be preferred over text/directory
Product:	shared-mime-info	Reporter:	Marius Vollmer <marius.vollmer>
Component:	freedesktop.org.xml	Assignee:	Shared Mime Info group <shared_mime_info>
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium	CC:	jylee, mathias.hasselmann
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Attachments:	Use text/x-vcard instead of text/directory for VCards.

Description Marius Vollmer 2009-05-11 07:53:49 UTC

Created attachment 25731 [details] [review]
Use text/x-vcard instead of text/directory for VCards.

In Maemo, we got some interoperability problems because VCard files were detected as text/directory.  We fixed that by detecting them as text/x-vcard instead.  This is an unwelcome deviation from freedesktop.org.xml but right now I think we are right and freedesktop.org.xml should be changed with the attached patch.

I understand that this might have been discussed to death already, and I am no expert on this anyway.  Matthias Hasselmann <mathias@openismus.com> will have better arguments.  I'll invite him over.

In general, I think that renaming mime-types will simply not work and the whole notion of one type being an alias of another seems to be asking for trouble (but I don't know the history of text/directory either, so I better shut up).

Comment 1 Mathias Hasselmann 2009-05-11 08:17:31 UTC

Here I am.

Well, I also don't know the decision process about making "text/directory" the default in freedesktop.org.xml, but as Marius pointed out, this change causes interoperability problems.

Initially with vCard 2.1 the MIME type "text/x-vcard" was proposed [1]. Later with vCard 3.0 the proposed MIME type got changed to "text/directory".

It seems that only the old "text/x-vcard" type got wide adoption. For instance MS Windows uses this type, just checked this on Windows Vista right now. Exchanging business cards via Bluetooth also uses version 2.1 of the vCard standard.

It's also to consider, that each proper application supporting vCard 3.0, and therefore registering as handler for "text/directory", should be backward compatible with vCard 2.1 and therefore know about the "old" MIME type "text/x-vcard". The reverse assumption doesn't hold, as applications written with only vCard 2.1 in mind hardly can know about vCard 3.0. Take OBEX as example which is widly used, but specified before vCard 3.0 was published.


[1] http://www.imc.org/pdi/pdiproddev.html
[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2425.txt

Comment 2 Mathias Hasselmann 2009-07-21 14:22:40 UTC

jrb: ping?

Comment 3 Bastien Nocera 2010-01-28 09:21:39 UTC

Then please fix your patch to:
- separate vCard v2 and v3 mime-types
- make the v3 mime-type a sub-class of the v2 format
- attach your patch as a git formatted patch
- and add a test case for each of those.

If in doubt, check the HACKING file.

Comment 4 Bastien Nocera 2011-05-25 07:16:53 UTC

Also note that text/vcard is a registered mime-type now, as seen in bug:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27743

Waiting on patches...

Comment 5 Bastien Nocera 2011-05-25 07:17:37 UTC

*** Bug 27743 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6 GitLab Migration User 2018-10-13 10:37:34 UTC

-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/shared-mime-info/issues/27.

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