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

Re: [Summary, VERSION #3] Media type (MIME) of XML in MSWord?

• To: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>
• Subject: Re: [Summary, VERSION #3] Media type (MIME) of XML in MSWord? in Notepad? when compressed? etc
• From: Greg Hunt <greg@f...>
• Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 22:06:10 +1000
• Cc: costello@m..., xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <200606150909.k5F99Mmr007046@e...>
• References: <B8415163A689094689542C617ECA0366CCF142@I...> <200606150909.k5F99Mmr007046@e...>
• User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716)

David,
Its an interesting point that you make.  Mime types are just hints made 
available in a specific recipient processing context.  It is not just 
the sender that selects them, but they are implicitly configured with 
identifiable combinations of sender and receiver in mind.  Your point 
about an xhtml+xlink+svg+mathml document then is answered by "what is 
intelligible to the recipient?". 

Greg

David Carlisle wrote:

>>Thus, the official
>>MIME type assignment to XML data is: 
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>     application/xml
>>    
>>
>
>This is only the case (possibly the minority of cases) where there isn't
>a more specific mime type (either registered or in use in the wild)
>
>so XHTML documents are XML but may be
>  text/html (grr:-) or application/xhtml+xml
>
>XSLT documents are XML but may be 
>  text/xsl (never registered) or application/xsl+xml
>
>SVG documents are XML but may be image/svg+xml 
>
>etc...
>
>In some cases you may be able to tell (or guess) from the media type
>name that the document is XML, for example if it follows the ...+xml
>convention of RFC 3023, but in general the only way to know if a
>document format identified by a media type is XML or not is to look up
>the media type registration and read the text.
>
>Basically Media types were not designed for XML and are a pretty bad
>fit. If you lable everything as application/xml then they lose their
>original purpose of being able to trigger an appropriate program
>to handle the data, you typically do not want to send SVG and ChemML to
>the same viewing application. Conversely if you lable each vocabulary
>with a different mime type, there has never really been a good answer to
>give to the question of what mime type you give to a
>xhtml+xlink+svg+mathml document.
>
>
>David
>
>________________________________________________________________________
>This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. The
>service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive
>anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit:
>http://www.star.net.uk
>________________________________________________________________________
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
>initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>
>
>The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
>
>To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
>manager: <http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php>
>
>
>  
>

• References:
  • [Summary, VERSION #3] Media type (MIME) of XML in MS Word? in Notepad? when compressed? etc
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
  • Re: [Summary, VERSION #3] Media type (MIME) of XML in MS Word? in Notepad? when compressed? etc
    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>

• Prev by Date: servlet and xml getting java.lang.IllegalStateException
• Next by Date: Clustering Customization Vs Global Standards
• Previous by thread: Re: [Summary, VERSION #3] Media type (MIME) of XML in MS Word? in Notepad? when compressed? etc
• Next by thread: Standard DTDs/Templates
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread