Re: ATOM representation of search result facets
Mark Baker <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.web.services.rest |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <CALcoZirUMwyBEU75qnxWOTkMtneHNo_Vs3vE1Po=Mbkc4U+t0w@mail.gmail.com> |
Peter, On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 8:09 AM, Rushforth, Peter <[email protected]> wrote: > My understanding is that application/atom+xml describes atom *without* > extensions. If you put extensions in, > to *any media type*, via either new markup or even changing the meaning of > standard atom markup, you should change media types, > because it is the media type which names / describes the preferred > semantics of the message, and it is > the message metadata which is the most authoritative on the web: That's not the case. It may well be the case for some - text/plain comes to mind - but the majority of widely used media types are designed well enough to accommodate non-breaking extensions (where their introduction doesn't affect the meaning of the core content). That said, there's some ambiguity here with regards to when it makes sense to use a different (or new) media type. An SVG document wrapped in "<html><body>" wouldn't be very useful served with the text/html media type, for example. But an Atom document with a single entry extension from a foreign namespace is still an Atom document because the spec specifically accommodates such an extension; it should use application/atom+xml. In between those two extremes, the decision depends upon the specifics of the extensibility features of the type(s) in play, the importance and quantity of extended vs. core content. Only the publisher knows what the content means, so they get to decide which media type to use. Mark.