ietf-xml-mime
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Re: Negotiated Content Delivery: Maxmimizing Information

1999-05-11 08:12:49
It has been reported that there is deployed software that has to be changed
to deal with new top-level types (a big design botch in my opinion). This
came up when the model top-level type was added.

There's also the cost of writing it up and getting it standardized. It is
likely that there would be strong objection to defining such a type (I
certainly would object because I don't see this as being properly 
orthogonal to
several of the existing top-level types).

So the practical costs are caused by 'reports' of poorly written software,
while the political costs are caused by a group of dug-in individuals on
philosophical grounds.  It doesn't sound promising, but it also sounds like
the real costs are political, not caused by implementations.  (We would
hope that those folks fixed their software correctly after the experience
of model, but can't count on it, of course.)

Well, if comments on this list are any indicator, there appears to be close to
a consensus that this isn't the way to go. The reasons people give for this
fall all over the map, but people don't have to agree on why something is bad
to block it. And given the feedback here coming from the subset of the
community that is likely to be the most amenable to this idea, the chances of
this getting approved in a wider context look bad.

I'm afraid that I'm unconvinced that the costs of 1 are greater than the
costs of 2.  Are there genuine compatibility issues, or is this just
philosophical opposition?

The former, according to reports we've gotten in the past.

I'd like to hear more detail on these 'reports'.

As I said before, this came up in conjunction with the discussion that led
up to the creation of the model top-level type, and blocked the creation of
a "chemistry" top-level type. See the archives for the ietf-types list for
May-June 1995 for the full story.

It's hard to base a
cost-benefit analysis on reports with no owners or details.  As I noted
above, it sounds like philosophical opposition - politics - is the real
roadblock.

Philosophy isn't necessarily politics. My problem with the xml top-level type
proposal is that it doesn't mesh well with how existing top-level types
have been done. XML could be application material, image material, audio
material, model material, or even message material, and by creating a top
level XML type you may break the ability people currently have to assess
the broad category of something by looking at its top-level type. This
is a philosophical point, but it has ongoing real-world consequences outside
the purely political realm.

                                Ned

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