At 06:04 PM 5/12/99 -0700, Tim Bray wrote:
At 04:32 PM 5/11/99 -0400, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
This provides for things like:
graphics/svg-xml
application/xpdl-xml
application/ice-xml
model/x3d-xml
[...good news...]
But that syntax is rather ugly. Since I'm not an expert in this
field, a question for those who are: is there a precedent for this
kind of syntax design? I.e. loading extra values into the 2nd
half of the media type and introducing the '-' separator to do so?
I'd be interested. I can't say I've seen it. I suggested a suffix to
avoid the "who's the registrar of this here tree" issues.
Because if there is not, I would have to suggest that there must be
a better way, e.g. a syntax="xml" parameter or some such? -Tim
I'm concerned that while this is prettier, it's something that application
developers and users wouldn't see and wouldn't use. I'm not sure all ASP
and servlet developers are going to consistently set extra pieces in the
content-type header, unless they have to deal with parameters anyway, for
things like character set. Is current software (Apache, for instance) set
up to support parameters in MIME types for static files, or is it going to
take a rewrite? Have to admit, I haven't tried it, but I'll look in the
morning when I'm awake again.
Basically, can we make certain people actually use parameters? Otherwise,
making this work reliably seems to require XML someplace in the name. I'll
take reliability over aesthetics any day.
Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer / Building XML Applications (June)
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http://www.simonstl.com