ietf-xml-mime
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Re: Proposed Suffix for XML-based media types

1999-07-20 04:54:25
Simon St.Laurent writes:
[This is a more formal expansion of my earlier 'modest proposal'
(http://www.imc.org/ietf-xml-mime/mail-archive/msg00149.html), which seemed
to generate some interest.  This is an extremely rough draft and has no
official status of any kind.  All comments, revisions, improved
descriptions, better examples, outrage, etc. are welcome.]

My basic problem with this proposal is that it says

        * We need more than one level of fall back
        * To fix this we are going to start interpreting the string
          after the slash to add another layer of structure

i.e. media types are no longer supporting our needs fully.

In that case I would say: fix the problem, don't try to bandage it
over.

I very much like Dan Connolly's suggestion of a time back:

        Regard a media type as relative URL rooted at some agreed
        place, probably iana.org so that the media type text/xml then
        represents the URL

                http://iana.org/text/xml

(or similar).

Now when we need an extra layer of fallback, it is obvious how to do
it:

        text/xml/xhtml

for instance.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton
CWI, Amsterdam