* Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
* Gerald McCobb wrote:
However, as noted in the Internet-Draft, XHTML+Voice user agents have
special processing requirements including support for XML Events and
VoiceXML. An initialized VoiceXML interpreter is a specific
requirement.
This mime type is limited to XHTML+Voice applications and I don't
propose
to change the limited designation in the internet draft.
Much of the existing application/xhtml+xml content relies on support of
a variety of features such as the Macromedia Flash format and scripting.
I think the litmus test here is simple: are user agents that do not
support XHTML+Voice but XHTML 1.0/1.1 required to reject application/
xhtml-voice+xml content as beeing in an unsupported format?
XHTML+Voice adds the voice mode of interaction to web applications. This
additional mode of interaction is not that important for desktop clients.
Voice Interaction is useful for clients with limited processing, memory,
and network resources, such as cell phones and wireless PDAs. For clients
that don't accept XHTML+Voice markup it matters whether it has to receive
and ignore additional markup. For these clients it is important that
applications send markup dedicated to what they support.
If yes, a new media type is certainly justified. If it is acceptable or
even encouraged to process the content by ignoring the unknown bits then
there does not seem to be considerable value in this new type. As you
pointed out, W3C might at some point produce a recommendation where you
can use XHTML with inline SVG content; with application/xhtml-voice+xml
it's not really clear whether XHTML+Voice+SVG content should use
application/xhtml+xml, application/xhtml-voice+xml, or some third type.
XHTML+Voice adds voice as another mode of interaction with the
application,
while SVG is in most cases an important informational part of the
application.
XHTML+SVG content, unless the SVG fragments are in the <head> element
and referenced via something like <object data="#svg" />, would depend
even more on inline-SVG support than XHTML+Voice on inline VoiceXML
support, if we need to define a new media type for each combination of
XML formats, we'll quickly get a system where it simply does not matter
whether one uses specialized types or just application/xml.
This is one of the issues before the W3C CDF working group.
Are "+suffix" constructs the same as putting "+" within the subtype? A
mime type such as application/xhtml+voice+xml that maps directly to
XHTML+Voice is easy for authors to understand. I still see the "-" as
minus. What does application/xhtml-voice+xml mean but XHTML minus
voice.
As you know, XHTML already doesn't have voice...
And application/xml-dtd is for XML documents without DTD? Registered
types with "-" typically use the "-" to separate words. As you pointed
out, there aren't really types for "compound" formats yet; but it is
also not clear to me whether we should have such types at all. If the
CDF Working Group is really considering to have a single type for a
very wide range of combinations, why can't you use that type instead?
I'm talking about a perception that leads to a misunderstanding that I
have already received. I understand that application/xml-dtd means
"xml dtd" but "application/xhtml-voice" means "xhtml voice" and the
language is "xhtml+voice".
We don't know today what the CDF working group will decide and their
decision is probably a few years away. In the meantime, there are
XHTML+Voice applications in operation today.
Regards,
Gerald McCobb
IBM
8051 Congress Avenue
Boca Raton, FL 33487
Tel. # 561-862-2109 T/L 975-2109