Please review ietf-draft of the "application/soap+xml" media type

[ylafon at w3.org (Yves Lafon)]

This email serves to instantiate the two weeks discussion period on
"[e-mail]" of the ietf-draft describing the
"application/soap+xml" media type registration.

You can find the draft at
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-baker-soap-media-reg-02.txt

Thank you.

-- 
Yves Lafon - W3C
"Baroula que barouleras, au ti?u toujou t'entourneras."
-------------- next part --------------
Internet-Draft                                                Mark Baker
Expires: October, 2003                                       Independent
                                                         Mark Nottingham
                                                             BEA Systems
                                                          April 14, 2003

                 The "application/soap+xml" media type
                   draft-baker-soap-media-reg-02.txt

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions
   of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
   other groups may also distribute working documents as
   Internet-Drafts.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
   months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other
   documents at any time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-
   Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as
   "work in progress."

   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt

   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

   Feedback or discussion about this draft should be directed to the
   XML Protocol Working Group public mailing list, [e-mail]
   with archives at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/

Abstract

   This document defines the "application/soap+xml" media type which can
   be used to describe SOAP 1.2 messages serialized as XML.

1. Introduction

   SOAP version 1.2 (SOAP) is a lightweight protocol intended for
   exchange of structured information between peers in a decentralized,
   distributed environment. It defines an extensible messaging framework
   that contains a message construct based on XML technologies that can
   be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols.

   This specification defines the media type "application/soap+xml"
   which can be used to identify SOAP messages serialized with XML 1.0
   carried in MIME or MIME like protocols that support the concept of
   media types for which a SOAP binding has been defined.

2. Registration

   The registration form can be found in Appendix A of the "SOAP 1.2
   Part 2: Adjuncts" [SOAP12P2] specification.

3. Authors' Addresses

   Mark A. Baker
   Independent
   37 Charles St.
   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. K1M 1R3
   tel:[phone]
   mailto:[e-mail]

   Mark Nottingham
   BEA Systems
   Level 15, 235 Montgomery Street
   San Francisco, CA, US.  94104
   mailto:[e-mail]

4. References

[SOAP12P2] "SOAP Version 1.2 Part 2: Adjuncts", W3C Candidate
         Recommendation (work in progress), December 2002.  Gudgin, M.,
         Hadley, M., Mendelsohn, N., Moreau, JJ., Nielsen, H.
         <http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-soap12-part1-20021219>. 
>From [e-mail]  Sat Apr 12 02:38:54 2003
From: ewexler at stickdog.com (Etan Wexler)
Date: Tue Jan  3 16:22:34 2006
Subject: XHTML, XML, fancy text, and applications
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Mikko Rantalainen wrote to <mailto:[e-mail]> on 9 April 2003 in "Re:
XHTML2 MIME type" (<mid:[e-mail]>):

> [This is getting a bit offtopic and I'm not really expecting any
> replies. I'll post some thoughts to help future archive diggers.]

I'm steering the discussion into the MIME media types list,
<mailto:[e-mail]>. Please send public replies there.

> OK. This is the first time I actually viewed RFC 3023 and I want to say
> that I consider "+xml" extension as an ugly hack.

I consider it an elegant solution. Our difference leads me to conclude that
this is at least partly a matter of taste. De gustibus non disputandum.

> I'm still wondering why they choose
> to use "+" as a separator if the meaning is "this file can be considered
> as something OR xml".

I would see it as "This resource is of such-and-such type AND it is XML in
terms of syntax."

> When I first time saw application/xhtml+xml I
> immediatly thought that it meant it's an xhtml file with possible
> additional namespaces.

While I affirm the principle that MIME media type names should be as clear
as is possible within the limited character repertoire and some reasonable
length, we have IANA registrations and Requests For Comments that define
each type. Those documents are meant for reading, not for ignoring.

> As I have some programming background I think
> application/xhtml|xml would have been much better and the pipe was
> available in addition to the plus sign.

As I know that non-programmer lay people encounter MIME media type names
with some frequency on the Web (by "Web" I'm including mail systems), I have
to say that the pipe character ("|", vertical line, U+007C) is too devoid of
well-known semantics. In my experience in the English-speaking United
States, if there is any character that commonly denotes alternatives, it is
the slash ("/", solidus, U+002F). (Perhaps, in that case, I should have
written slash/solidus.) The slash is reserved and will not find its way into
a MIME media subtype name.

> After reading the references you provided I still feel that we need a
> new top level mime type. We have various file types that are basically
> text but not plain text.

Right, and those should be subtypes of "text" if they can reasonably be
treated as "text/plain", or subtypes of "application" if they contain
non-textual markup.

> If the reason for not having another top level MIME type for xml/* is
> that we want to specify TYPE instead of SYNTAX then the text/* shouldn't
> be considered as plain text syntax either and it should be used for all
> file types that mostly contain text.

I think that the principle in effect is that treatment as "text/plain" has
to be a reasonable fallback for any "text" subtype. What constitutes
reasonable is a matter for debate. I suspect that most people could not make
sense of Postscript source code (hence "application/postscript"), even
though it is textual. HTML source code, on the other hand, is likely to
contain passages of readable text (hence "text/html"), even if it leaves the
reader wondering what all the symbols mean.

> I think the application/* top level type shouldn't be used for XHTML 2
> just because one needs an application to easily read the content.

My understanding is that the MIME media type name "application" describes
the content itself, not the necessary processing software. It's like "This
resource is an application of some sort", not like "Start an application to
handle this resource".

> Following the same logic we should move all of image/*, video/* and
> audio/* types to application/* because you cannot view any of those
> without an application either.

Again, the term "application" describes the resource, not the handler.

> Perhaps application/* should be renamed to misc/* or other/*?

That sounds like a terrible idea, given the installed base of software that
understands and expects the "application" name.

-- 
Etan Wexler: stuffed but not satiated, damn it.
 <mailto:[e-mail]>