Re: application/xml in ietf-xml-guidelines

On Wed, Apr 17, 2002 at 04:28:18PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> depending on what you mean by "dispatch", neither, really, does 
> any other content-type.  in particular, content-types don't specify 
> anything about presentation or processing; these decisions are up 
> to the recipient.  

We could talk about this again (I'm game!), or I could just reference
the same discussion we held on this topic on www-tag.  My position is
very close to Roy's, and I don't have much to add to what he said at
this time.

The posts of his that best reflect my position are;

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Jan/0162.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Jan/0167.html

> > Also, I believe that "text/xml" should be explicitly not recommended,
> > due to the text/plain fallback of all text/* types.  
> 
> if it's just a fallback behavior, why does it matter much?
> actually "display as text" is probably a better fallback for XML 
> than for HTML - XML generally seems to be more readable than HTML :)

When I was first introduced to this issue while writing RFC 3236, it
was made quite clear to me (on this list, I believe), that text/*
was for content that anybody could easily read.  The XML prolog would
scare off most people!  And those that make it past that would surely
be overwhelmed by xmlns declarations! 8-)

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.      [email protected]
http://www.markbaker.ca   http://www.planetfred.com