[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: Encoded XML Content -- was Re: Open Trading Protocol (CDATA, etc)(wa

• From: Gavin McKenzie <gmckenzi@J...>
• To: 'Don Park' <donpark@q...>, "'xml-dev@i...'" <xml-dev@i...>
• Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 09:14:00 -0500

Don,

Here's my suggestions...

Methinks xml:encoding is too close to the XML PI encoding for character
set encodings. I wish that the XML PI encoding had been called
text-encoding or char-encoding -- this would have made it easier to come
up with other 'encoding' attributes without ambiguity. *sigh*

How about:

1. xml:transfer-encoding
2. xml:content-encoding

Suggestion #1 is a little ugly because it has the word 'transfer', but
this is closer to the MIME heritage where base64 is primarily used for
packaging style encoding, as opposed to locale char-set encoding. 

Suggestion #2 may seem redundant but at least doesn't conflict directly
with 'encoding' in the context of locale char-set encoding.  

As for the mimetype attribute...I'd vote for something closer to IOTP,
such as:

 xml:content-format

where content-format can be one of: 
- a mimetype that indentifies the content format, e.g. "image/jpeg"
- a user-defined code of the form "x-ddd:nnn", where ddd is a domain and
nnn is an arbitrary name for the format e.g. "x-jetform:mdf"  

However, IOTP includes other acceptable values for content-format such
as 'PCDATA' and 'XML'.  I view this as duplication and believe that only
the two options above are necessary; i.e. XML content should be able to
be expressed as 'text/xml', ignoring the fact that this isn't a *real*
mimetype.

And I assume that the implication in all of this that somebody could
include content that contains well-formed and valid xml that happens to
be base64'd?  Hence it is neccessary for the parser to unwrap such
sections, right?


Thoughts?

Gavin.


xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i...
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Encoded XML Content
    • From: Chris Smith <smith@i...>

• Prev by Date: Re: XML-Data Questions
• Next by Date: Re: GEDCOM - A Killer XML Application?
• Previous by thread: Encoded XML Content -- was Re: Open Trading Protocol (CDATA, etc)(was BASE64 section support)
• Next by thread: RE: Encoded XML Content
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread