Rick Jelliffe wrote
(http://www.imc.org/ietf-xml-mime/mail-archive/msg00064.html):
In particular, I think we are missing a key distinction that the MIME
content-type is not so much the "type" of a resource, but the type of a
particular *publication* of a resource.
I disagree with this definiton of the semantics of "MIME content-type".
As far as I know, the MIME mechanism is the only mechanism for data typing
that is available today on the Internet. The HTTP/1.1 spec
(http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.1/draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-rev-06.txt)
says:
"3.7 Media Types
HTTP uses Internet Media Types [17] in the Content-Type (section
14.17) and Accept (section 14.1) header fields in order to provide
open and extensible data typing and type negotiation."
XML is portable data; the particular use of this data should not be
specified by the "publisher". The user should be able to detect the
data type and then select an application that he/she likes. How can a
"publisher" know, what applications are available at the user's site?
All the best,
Paul
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