XML media types revisited

[Borden, Jonathan]

Simon,

	It's not that its otherwise a bad idea (it is an excellent idea). the
problem is that adding a top level MIME type requires changes to tons of
MIME aware code. This is why I always use text/xml as opposed to
application/xml because the "application" top level is quite frequently used
to denote 8 bit character data or binary data types which need to be base64
encoded for SMTP transport whereas "text" data is 7bit (UNICODE aside :-)
and is appropriately transfered as content-type: 7bit or quoted-printable.

	On the other hand, my MIME code takes special care when it sees the
text/xml content-type (not that this should sway the IETF :-))

	not that these assumptions are valid, its just that they exist.

Jonathan Borden
http://jabr.ne.mediaone.net

>
> Of course plain text will still survive; I'm hardly proposing abolishing
> text or application as top-level types.  I'm just saying that XML is a
> top-level type itself.
>
> Your arbitrary level proposal is quite reasonable, though I suspect that
> that would require considerably more development (through the full IETF
> process) than just adding a new top-level type.
>
> Intriguing possibility, though...

>
>


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