At 08:51 PM 1/17/02 -0500, Ian Graham wrote:
MIME really doesn't give you a nice way of defining multipe properties for
a single resource, other than the media features extension described
in RFC 2912. Using this extension (Designed for a different purpose, BTW)
you could write something like:
Not so very different...
Content-Type: text/xml;
Content-features:
(& (primary-namespace="uri1")
(secondary-namespace="uri2")
...
)
The question then is -- does that really give you anything particularly
useful over text/xml+whatever? Once I started to think through some
uses, I honestly couldn't think of a compelling advantage ...
... it gives fine grained content feature description with sufficient
detail to form a basis for content negotiation. The work had (some of)
its roots in recognition of the fact that the content type alone was
insufficient for effective content negotiation in HTTP.
It also allows one a (limited) capability to describe dependencies between
features (e.g. raw text in English and French, HTML in English only, or an
image with Japanese content).
(I'm not suggesting all this is relevant to the current debate, just trying
to answer the question you raise.)
#g
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