[Python-Dev] [Python-checkins] cpython (3.2): #5301: add image/vnd.microsoft.icon (.ico) MIME type

[Terry Reedy]

On 8/21/2011 8:10 PM, Scott Dial wrote:
> On 8/21/2011 3:12 PM, Terry Reedy wrote:

>> But it is not (a behavior bug). Every feature request 'fixes' what its
>> proposer considers to be a design bug or something.
>
> What's the feature added? That's a semantic game.

Please. It is an operational decision. I personally would be ok with 
doing away with bugfix-only releases and just releasing a new version 
with all patches every 6 months. It certainly would make issue 
management easier. But most people don't want such rapid change, even to 
the point of resisting fixes to design errors of 20 years ago. On the 
other hand, most people want their personal fix/feature included right 
away, in the next release. But if we do not include everything every 
release, we make decisions as what to include or not.

>> It is a new feature for the same reason
>> http://bugs.python.org/issue10730 was. If that had not been added for
>> 3.2.0 (during the beta period, with Georg's permission), it would have
>> waited for 3.3.s

In http://bugs.python.org/msg124332 from that issue, David Murray refers 
to "the policy stated in mimetypes". I could not find a policy 
explicitly stated in the doc, not in a quick review of the code. But I 
believe what he meant is "Include the most commonly used subset of 
registered extensions. Add more as requested with every x.y version." If 
it is really not in the doc, I wish it, or an agreed-on revision, were 
added. "Add more as requested with every x.y.x release." is the 
alternative that Sandro seems to have followed.

> ISTM, that Issue #10730 was more contentious because it is *not* an
> IANA-assigned mime-type, whereas image/vnd.microsoft.icon is and has
> been since 2003. Whereas image/svg+xml didn't get approved until earlier
> this month, AFAICT.

If we intended to include all registered mimetypes and this happened to 
be missing, that would be a bug. But there are scads of mimetypes, 
especially vender-specific vnd types, that we do not include. Many 
predate 2003 and are probably obsolete, and hence  well not included. 
There might be others that are used generally.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy