RFC 2854 (rfc2854) - Page 2 of 8
The 'text/html' Media Type
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2854 The 'text/html' Media Type June 2000
[HTML32] notes "This specification defines HTML version 3.2. HTML 3.2
aims to capture recommended practice as of early '96 and as such to
be used as a replacement for HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866)." Subsequent
specifications for HTML describe the differences in each version.
In addition to the development of standards, a wide variety of
additional extensions, restrictions, and modifications to HTML were
popularized by NCSA's Mosaic system and subsequently by the
competitive implementations of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft
Internet Explorer; these extensions are documented in numerous books
and online guides.
2. Registration of MIME media type text/html
MIME media type name: text
MIME subtype name: html
Required parameters: none
Optional parameters:
charset
The optional parameter "charset" refers to the character
encoding used to represent the HTML document as a sequence of
bytes. Any registered IANA charset may be used, but UTF-8 is
preferred. Although this parameter is optional, it is strongly
recommended that it always be present. See Section 6 below for
a discussion of charset default rules.
Note that [HTML20] included an optional "level" parameter; in
practice, this parameter was never used and has been removed from
this specification. [HTML30] also suggested a "version"
parameter; in practice, this parameter also was never used and has
been removed from this specification.
Encoding considerations:
See Section 4 of this document.
Security considerations:
See Section 7 of this document.
Interoperability considerations:
HTML is designed to be interoperable across the widest possible
range of platforms and devices of varying capabilities. However,
there are contexts (platforms of limited display capability, for
example) where not all of the capabilities of the full HTML
definition are feasible. There is ongoing work to develop both a
modularization of HTML and a set of profiling capabilities to
identify and negotiate restricted (and extended) capabilities.
Connolly & Masinter Informational