ietf-xml-mime
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RE: Introduction of media types for XML DTDs

1999-07-19 09:54:05
Terry Allen wrote,
John Cowan wrote,
The average user probably will never fetch a 
document of type */xml-dtd.

I hope that's false.  I hope the average user's user 
agent will be fetching DTDs all the time, for use with 
documents marked up in accordance with them.

<pedantic>
A users user-agent fetching a DTD is quite different
from a user fetching a DTD directly (eg. by typing it's
URL into their UAs address line).
</pedantic>

Pedantry aside, this is an important distinction (one
I presume John had in mind when he wrote what he wrote).
If I explicitly fetch a textual DTD resource I'd
expect it to be rendered textually without having to
take any special action. Most users won't ever do that,
but that seems fairly slender grounds for throwing away
at MIME level the knowledge that DTD text is text. 

Cheers,


Miles

-- 
Miles Sabin                          Cromwell Media
Internet Systems Architect           5/6 Glenthorne Mews
+44 (0)181 410 2230                  London, W6 0LJ
msabin(_at_)cromwellmedia(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk           England