Let's say you have two resources that both resolve to the same content.
GET one and the response is always sent as image/cvg+xml.
GET two and the response is always sent as application/xml.
Those are separate semantics, and thus separate resources. It doesn't
prevent the UA from taking the content and choosing to manipulate it
in different ways, but it does define the semantics from the perspective
of the person who created the two separate URI used to access those
two resources containing the same content.
I understand that view. It's equivalent to sending HTML as text/plain
and not expecting that it be displayed as HTML. It's a reasonable
argument, primarily because the specification of */xml doesn't say what
to expect, plus not all XML uses namespaces. Assuming no dispatch would
at least provide some consistentcy.
So let's say we define a new media type for which this dispatching
behaviour is required. Then publishers describing their content with
that type would expect that the first processor (other than the one
for the media type) to see the content would be, in your example, an SVG
processor.
How's that sound?
MB
--
Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. mbaker(_at_)planetfred(_dot_)com
http://www.markbaker.ca http://www.planetfred.com