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RDDL and MIME types

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 09:47:56 -0500

After pondering RDDL and data types yesterday, I'm now pondering RDDL and 
MIME types.

Namespace URIs are identifiers used inside of documents, but it seems 
reasonable that they could become identifiers used earlier in the content 
negotiation process, much as MIME types are today.  Putting RDDL documents 
at the ends of those URIs would give software and human users a chance to 
make a more informed choice about what information they'd be receiving and 
how to process it.

It also struck me that RDDL could be used to describe non-XML formats just 
as easily as XML, making it a plausible replacement (not that it will 
happen in my lifetime) for the MIME type registration process and the RFCs 
which describe MIME types.

Maybe I've just thought too hard, but this seems like a reasonable path 
forward for supporting the ever-growing number of XML document types in an 
unconstrained but useful fashion.

Simon St.Laurent
Associate Editor
O'Reilly and Associates

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