by As a mathematician and co-moderator of sci.math.research, I would like
to see a MIME type (or rather MIME type) for self-contained TeX
missives, which might either be posted or e-mailed. I had thought that
the application/x-tex type was right for plain TeX postings, and I
suggested using application/x-latex for*postings. I wrote a
helper that compiles the TeX and invokes a DVI viewer.
Unfortunately, the whole system is hosed. Why? Because the popular
NCSA httpd has an application/x-tex AddType directive *in the source
code* that automatically labels all ".tex" files with this type. Many
TeX files on the Web on the do not compile by themselves, and most are
made available for those who want to view or edit the source rather
than view or print out the document immediately. Attaching
application/postscript to Postsript macro libraries or code snippets
would be similar, and what it means in practice is that
application/x-tex is useless as anything other than a synonym for
text/plain.
I would like to solve this problem by registering a TeX Media type,
probably text/tex and text/latex, together with a note that it is
specifically for self-contained TeX documents that are intended to be
auto-compiled. This is a controversial step and may be ditching the
idea of a useful TeX Media Type is a better solution. If it were the
correct thing to do, it would require the cooperation of people writing
http daemons. With that in mind, I sent my suggestion to the ietf-list
mailing list, which I thought was intended for registering Media
Types. The response was a deafening silence. So instead, I am
presenting the problem to the Net for comments. Please send a copy of
your reply by mail.