RFC 2318

RFC 2318: The text/css Media Type 🎀

okay bestie, this is RFC 2318 🦋, and it's called The text/css Media Type ✨. It was written by Hakon Lie, Bert Bos, and Chris Lilley 💅, all from W3C. It's dated March 1998 🌸 and its category is Informational 💖. The title block doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so no drama there 🙈

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Status of This Memo 🌈

this memo is just here to share information with the Internet community 🫶 it doesn't specify an Internet standard of any kind, and you can distribute it as much as you want ✨

Copyright Notice 💜

the Internet Society owns the copyright (1998), and all rights are reserved 🔒

Abstract ✨

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the style sheet language for the World Wide Web 🎨 people have been using CSS style sheets since October 1995 with the media type text/css, without ever registering it. this memo is basically here to make that official 💅

1. Introduction 🎀

the World Wide Web Consortium put out a Recommendation [1] that defines Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 💖 this memo gives you the info about the text/css media type 🦋

2. Cascading Style Sheets 🌸

okay so CSS is the style sheet language for the Web 🎀 it describes how things look (fonts, colors, spacing) for structured documents ✨ it's human readable and writable too, and it uses the same kind of terms people use in desktop publishing 💅

again, CSS style sheets have been around since October 1995 using text/css without registration, and this memo is here to regularize that position 🙈

a CSS style sheet can be either one of these:

(1) external - the style sheet is linked to a document through a URI and lives as its own separate object on the Web 🌐 the media type text/css shows up when you fetch it, like in the Content-Type and Accept header fields of HTTP [2] 🍓

(2) internal - the style sheet sits inside the document itself 🧚 a typical example is an HTML [3] document that has a style sheet inside the STYLE element 💜 because they're so closely related, HTML and CSS share the same top-level name ("text") 🫶

4. Registration Information 💅

here's the registration template, exactly as it's written so nothing gets lost 🎀

To: ietf-types@iana.org
Subject: Registration of MIME media type text/css

MIME media type name: text

MIME subtype name: css

Required parameters: none

Optional parameters: charset

okay so CSS syntax is written in US-ASCII, but a CSS file can have strings that use any Unicode character 🌈 any charset that's a superset of US-ASCII may be used, and US-ASCII, iso-8859-X and utf-8 are recommended ✨

Encoding considerations 🦋: for transports that aren't 8-bit clean, quoted-printable encoding is recommended, because most of the characters will be CSS syntax and therefore US-ASCII 🙈

Security considerations 🔥: this part is seriously important bestie 💀 applying a style sheet to a document can hide information that would otherwise be visible 👀 for example, a very small font size can be specified, or certain document elements can have their display turned off 😭

CSS style sheets are made of declarative property/value pairs assigned to element selectors 🧚 they contain no executable code 💖

just like HTML documents, CSS style sheets can link to other media (images, sounds, fonts, other style sheets) 🌸 software typically follows those links automatically, which means files get transferred without the user explicitly asking for each one 👑 the security considerations of each linked file are the ones for its own registered type 🔒

Interoperability considerations 🫶: CSS has proven to be widely interoperable across computer platforms, across Web browsers from different makers, and for import and export in lots of authoring tools 🎀

Published specification ✨: see [1]

Applications which use this media type 💅: CSS is device-, platform- and vendor-neutral 🌈 it's supported by a wide range of Web user agents and authoring tools for formatting HTML and XML documents 🦋

Additional information 🍓: here's the info, verbatim:

Magic number(s): none
File extension(s): .css
Macintosh File Type Code(s): "css "
Object Identifier(s) or OID(s): none

Person & email address to contact for further information 💜: the authors of this memo 🫶

Intended usage 🌸: COMMON

Author/Change controller 👑: (this one's blank in the original, so it stays blank 🙈)

5. References 📚

[1] Lie, H., and B. Bos, "Cascading Style Sheets, level 1", W3C Recommendation REC-CSS1-961217, http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1-961217, December 1996. 🎀

[2] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Nielsen, H., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2068, January 1997. 🦋

[3] Raggett, D., Le Hors, A. and I. Jacobs, "HTML 4.0 Specification", W3C Recommendation REC-html40-971218, http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40, December 1997. 💖

6. Authors' Addresses 🌸

the three authors are all at the same W3C/INRIA address in Sophia Antipolis, France 🇫🇷 here are their contact details, copied exactly so you can reach them 💅

Hakon Lie
W3C/INRIA
2004, route des Lucioles - B.P. 93
06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex
FRANCE

Phone: +33 (0)492387771
Fax:   +33 (0)493657765
EMail: howcome@w3.org


Bert Bos
2004, route des Lucioles - B.P. 93
06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex
FRANCE

Phone: +33 (0)492387692
Fax:   +33 (0)493657765
EMail: bert@w3.org


Chris Lilley
2004, route des Lucioles - B.P. 93
06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex
FRANCE

Phone: +33 (0)492387987
Fax:   +33 (0)493657765
EMail: chris@w3.org

7. Full Copyright Statement ⚖️

the Internet Society copyright (1998) covers everything here, and all rights are reserved 🔒 the legal wording is kept exactly as it was written, because you don't mess with legal text 🙈

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998).  All Rights Reserved.

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implmentation may be prepared, copied, published and
distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

that's the whole RFC, bestie 🌈✨💅