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

[Charles Plessy]

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

[Simon Josefsson]

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

I did so now.

/Simon