Re: Media types

On Thu, 2002-01-17 at 17:54, Keith Moore wrote:
> > It's not MIME's fault that it was designed in an era when no one
> > expected the possibility of creating such labelled content.  However,
> > such content is useful, and MIME's inability to handle such things
> > definitely feels like a limitation from the perspective of people who
> > like such things.
> 
> I don't see an inability of MIME to handle labelled content, I see 
> XML's deliberate decision to use a means of content-labelling which 
> was incompatible with MIME, while still expecting to use MIME 
> framing to convey XML from one place to another.

How would you have proposed that XML's developers create a
MIME-compliant form of content labelling?  

Or would you simply have banned the notion of mixing different
vocabularies into a single document?

> MIME does have its limitations

Anything with only two levels is pretty well guaranteed to run into a
need for three or more.

MIME is a legacy technology.  It works well for what it did and does. 
That doesn't mean it'll work well going forward.  (And the same may well
happen to XML over a similar period of time.)

> On the other hand, it might be worth the trouble to define a
> different transmission format for the sole purpose of shipping
> XML around.  It's not as if either SMTP or HTTP is ideal for 
> this purpose either.

No, they're not very efficient.  I'm not convinced however, that sending
XML over separate pipes is particularly sensible either.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com