ietf-xml-mime
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RE: Requesting a revision of RFC3023

2003-09-17 11:04:30

Tim Bray wrote:
I took an action item to ask about the chances of revising what 3023 
says about the charset parameter; while I'm not sure, I suspect that 
there may actually be some level of consensus about the 
desirable changes:

Quite possible.

1. Deprecate text/* for anything that's in XML.

Yes, please!

2. Deprecate the charset parameter for application/xml and 
application/*+xml.

This would hurt some legitimate (but probably rare, perhaps unimportant) use
cases where:

1) a server generates some XML without an encoding decl, knowing that it
will send an authoritative charset parameter, or

2) a proxy transcodes an XML entity without fixing the encoding decl
therein,  knowing that it will send an authoritative charset parameter.

I'm not saying this kills the proposal, just that it needs to be weighed in.
Perhaps it will make the difference between "deprecate", "outlaw" or various
strengths of "discourage".

For the server, on the other hand, 
this is easy to get wrong, particularly with the introduction 
of various kinds of filters in modern web servers.

No need to invoke filters, older and simpler servers are known historically
to get it wrong most of the time.

it should be made clear that nobody sending a media-type 
should send a charset for an XML media-type unless it REALLY REALLY KNOWS
what it's 
sending, and in that case should consider not sending it anyhow.

Yes.

-- 
François Yergeau