At 02:20 PM 3/17/00 -0500, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
I don't see the 'complexity' that certain other folks here are complaining
about - in fact, I think these 4 bytes promise considerable simplification
over any multi-parameter approach, for both humans and machines.
This argument might hold if the only requirement is to (a) recognize a
specific application of XML, and (b) (usually) recognize a generic
XML-based file format, even when the specific application is not recognized.
I have read a lot of stuff recently that indicates the forward vision of
much W3C activity is that a single XML file may contain data corresponding
to many different XML applications. Once we get into this kind of
territory, I think the idea of a MIME subtype suffix becomes hopelesly
lost, and some kind of multiparameter approach becomes the simplest way to
deal with the recognition problem.
#g
------------
Graham Klyne
(GK(_at_)ACM(_dot_)ORG)