Re: Application dispatch for application/xml

Hello Mark,

Great to see your work.

At 23:26 04/01/21 -0500, Mark Baker wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>In preparation for a 3023 revision, I've taken it upon myself to examine
>how various agents dispatch applications for documents described with
>the application/xml media type.  I'm currently considering the impact of
>XML namespaces and xml-stylesheet declarations.  See;
>
>http://www.markbaker.ca/2004/01/XmlDispatchTest/
>
>My intent is to revise this paragraph from section 3 of RFC 3023;

Your web page says that you want to adapt this to current
behavior of user agents. This wasn't clear in this mail.
I'm also not sure that we already have enough experience
with this; one indication is that the only namespace that
you seem to be testing is XHTML.

Also, you write:
 >>>>
Firebird appears to use namespace dispatch with a fallback (for
unrecognized or absent namespaces) to tree view. This seems an
obvious bug, as the semantics of such an interaction are a function
of the capabilities of the recipient, rather than being visible to
the world at large.
 >>>>

It is totally unclear to me why you would want to call this a bug.
It seems to be the most natural thing if we want to have any kind
of dispatch at all (where we very clearly have to assume that not
all users will have the same capabilities installed) and want to
make use of the fact that we know it's XML.

If you mean that not displaying the namespace in the generic
XML view in firebird is a bug, then I agree, but it's not
clear that you mean this.

Regards,   Martin.


>   An XML document labeled as text/xml or application/xml might contain
>   namespace declarations, stylesheet-linking processing instructions
>   (PIs), schema information, or other declarations that might be used
>   to suggest how the document is to be processed.  For example, a
>   document might have the XHTML namespace and a reference to a CSS
>   stylesheet.  Such a document might be handled by applications that
>   would use this information to dispatch the document for appropriate
>   processing.
>
>If anybody knows of any browser or agent which dispatches applications
>based upon information other than the namespace or stylesheet, I'd
>love to hear about it.  Also, if you feel that the tests I've set up
>don't properly cover the namespace/stylesheet-dispatch space, or are
>otherwise deficient, I'd like to hear that too.  In fact, any and all
>feedback is appreciated, including more test results from other
>browsers and non-browser agents.
>
>Thanks.
>
>Mark.
>--
>Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca