Re: Media types

At 08:51 PM 1/17/02 -0500, Ian Graham wrote:
>MIME really doesn't give you a nice way of defining multipe properties for
>a single resource, other than the media features extension described
>in RFC 2912. Using this extension (Designed for a different purpose, BTW)
>you could write something like:

Not so very different...

>Content-Type: text/xml;
>Content-features:
>         (& (primary-namespace="uri1")
>            (secondary-namespace="uri2")
>            ...
>         )
>
>The question then is -- does that really give you anything particularly
>useful over text/xml+whatever?  Once I started to think through some
>uses, I honestly couldn't think of a compelling advantage ...

... it gives fine grained content feature description with sufficient 
detail to form a basis for content negotiation.   The work had (some of) 
its roots in recognition of the fact that the content type alone was 
insufficient for effective content negotiation in HTTP.

It also allows one a (limited) capability to describe dependencies between 
features (e.g. raw text in English and French, HTML in English only, or an 
image with Japanese content).

(I'm not suggesting all this is relevant to the current debate, just trying 
to answer the question you raise.)

#g


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