[ for ietf-822 readers: there has been a request on the ietf-types list
[ to define a new content-type called application/iotp. IOTP happens
[ to be layered on top of XML. some XML proponents have suggested that
[ it should instead be called application/iotp-xml and that all XML-based
[ content for which default handling would be useful should be named
[ with content-types ending in -xml. I see this as a MIME-architecture
[ issue which needs to be carefully condsidered before such a convention
[ would be adopted.
Ned writes:
I expect to see heavy use of XML under model and image at least. I suspect
there will be some use even under audio, video, and message.
This is why I'm strongly opposed to an top-level content-type. Like it or
not, we chose the outermost facet of our typing space in such a way that
XML has mutiple overlaps. It isn't even close to the orthogonality that's
needed. And it is way too late to change our typing space choice.
This leaves us with suffixes as tne only option IMO. And while I'm not
enthusiastic about the suffix, I don't agree that it does the harm that
you seem to think it does.
the problem with adding this frob to the content-type is that it
(a) encourages other folks to add other frobs, and
(b) removes the "right side of a content-type" as a place where
anything else which is orthogonal to presentation encoding can be added.
and thus it limits the future extensibility of the content-type scheme.
maybe we need a frob to indicate that the content is
gzip-compressed? surely that would be generally useful?
(so you could have application/foo and application/foo-gzip)?
maybe we need a frob to indicate that the content is (in somebody's view)
obscene? how about a frob to indicate that the content is asn.1/ber?
I don't think that -xml is the last frob that people will want to
add to MIME typing.
and there are other places where this frob could be added and
do less harm. maybe as a content-disposition parameter? e.g.
content-disposition: attachment; filename="foo.bar";
default_interpretation="application/xml"
Keith