ietf-xml-mime
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Finishing the XML-tagging discussion

2000-03-20 11:54:16
One alternative - not necessarily one I am advocating, but just
listing for
completeness - is to use a similar approach but swapped round:

image/svg;ContentLanguage=xml

I favor something like this.  it seems like it will interact more
cleanly with content negotiation mechanisms (as opposed to those
mechanisms having to acquire new pattern-matching facilities)

it's true that as MIME is architected the parameter space is on a
per-content-type basis.  but I don't see any great harm if we define
some global parameter name space (say, parameter names that begin
with "$" are global).  Then we could do something like:

content-type: image/svg; $superclass="application/xml"

ned - i agree with your take that having global parameters is a major change
to MIME.

suppose we were just to have something like:

    Content-type: image/svg; representation="xml"

where "representation" is just a plain old MIME parameter.

would you object to something along these lines?

Yes. Most of the problems I have with global parameter still apply to this
usage.

If we absolutely have to do this with a separate piece of information, I would
opt for a content-feature tag. That way there's a clear delineation between
when feature information is or is not present, and we don't mess up MIME
parameter space. And we need the feature tag anyway for negotiation purposes.

I still strongly prefer the suffix, however.

                                Ned