ietf-822
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Re: Finishing the XML-tagging discussion

2000-03-19 09:29:36
I haven't been following this discussion too closely, but has a top-level xml type been positively ruled out for any particular reason? e.g. xml/rdf, xml/rss, xml/xhtml, etc. It seems to me that if we're going to so much trouble to make sure that generic XML processors will recognize this with suffixes and so forth, maybe what we really have is a different top-level type? The argument here would that not all XML (e.g. SVG) is really text.

And from even further out in left field: why doesn't MIME allow sub-sub types? e.g. text/xml/rdf?

I can believe there are really good reasons this hasn't been proposed. However it does seem to me that we're struggling because we really need to attach four labels to a typical XML document:

1. That it's text
2. That it's XML
3. That it's some specific XML application
4. That it has a particular encoding

And MIME only gives us three places to work with.

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo(_at_)metalab(_dot_)unc(_dot_)edu | 
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