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

1999-07-21 15:44:01
I completely agree -- and this is why I think the ability to fall back to 
text
for things like DTDs offers no real advantages for any significant group.

I agree with this. however, another potential advantage comes to mind.

If a body part is labelled "text/something" the MUA can convert the text
to the local format when saving the file - e.g. newline delimited
for UNIX, CR-delimited for Mac, fixed length 80 character ebcdic records
for ancient IBM systems :).   The MUA can do this without having specific
knowledge of the content-type.

if the type is labelled "application/something" such a conversion
would not be appropriate unless the MUA had specific knowledge
of the content-type.

Actually, for some of these sorts of types, not converting can be a feature.
In some cases converting causes bad things to happen -- there can be
format and application dependencies on specific line terminators,
unfortunately.

                                Ned