Request for advice: sbml+xml Media Type

[distobj at acm.org (Mark Baker)]

Hi Ben,

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 08:22:00PM -0700, Ben Kovitz wrote:
> 1. Would it be a bad idea if we used RFC3236 (The  
> application/xhtml+xml Media Type) as a model for the document w  
> write?  I'm hoping that we don't need to explain the full  
> semantics of SBML in the RFC, since there are already some  
> weighty papers that do that (referenced above).  At only 8 pages,  
> RFC3236 seems like a model of simplicity and clarity that we  
> would like to emulate.

I'm not sure I'd agree, but thanks!

>  Or is it possible to get even simpler?  
> Some of the docs I found for XML MIME media types seemed to do  
> little more than list the name of the type and who submitted it.  

There's a continuum, of course.  For RFC 3236, Peter and I went out of
our way to include all the pertinent information that we felt was
required by the media type registration process.  The problem with
this, of course, is that some information in the specification needs to
be duplicated in the registration.

Luckily, this issue was recognized by the IETF, and more recent
W3C-initiated media type registrations are using a "shell" registration
document which permits the IANA media type registration form to be
included within the W3C-maintained specification.  See, for example, the
SOAP registration;

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-baker-soap-media-reg-03.txt

Unfortunately for you, I don't think this would apply, as I believe
this arrangement is fairly unique between the W3C and IETF, or
at least between the IETF and other similarly trusted organizations.

> 2. We are thinking of including required parameters of "level"  
> and "version".  Anything to watch out for here?  Is this a wrong  
> idea?  SBML has multiple levels to enable different simulation  
> tools to interoperate at different levels of complexity and  
> sophistication.  Each level can come in different versions.  More  
> levels are planned.  

In my observation, these rarely work out as extensibility mechanisms.
text/html used to have one ("level"), and it wasn't used, so wasn't
included in RFC 2854.  application/xhtml+xml has one ("profile"),
but it's there for a single purpose only; to help WAP apps distinguish
between XHTML Basic and XHTML 1.0.  I'm not aware of anybody using it
for other reasons.

You might want to consider whether prescribing sufficiently extensible
processing behaviour - such that "higher level" (more complex) content
may be properly processed by a "lower level" processor - would be
adequate for your needs.  Feel free to contact me off-line if you'd
like some advice on how that might be done.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
>From [e-mail]  Sun Jul 20 22:32:38 2003
From: triad at df.lth.se (Linus Walleij)
Date: Tue Jan  3 16:22:35 2006
Subject: Request for advice: sbml+xml Media Type
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Ben Kovitz wrote:

> Some of the docs I found for XML MIME media types seemed to do
> little more than list the name of the type and who submitted it.

This is indeed the case. However: these exist for historical reasons,
and also because the responsible people are very pragmatic about
things. When the IESG decides whether to pass the RFC or not, they will
get back to you and ask you to produce an RFC that describes the content
of this transport type (they did with me).

Thus the lengthy documents refered (inaccessible to me right now) should
preferabley reside with some standards body, IETF RFCs are preferred,
W3.org documents come next, IEEE standards have been referred (e.g.
audio/mpeg etc.)

I believe the reason as to why a standards body, and IETF in particular,
should be used as a storage holder for the standard spec is that it should
be easily and readily accessible by any contemporary AND FUTURE
implementors of this standard. Compared to IETF, the current storage of
the specification (Sourceforge in your case) is rather new and not
generally known as an eternal document store. (My inability to obtain
it right now is an indication of its reliability.) This means e.g. URI:s
referenced in your transport type could change and at a future date
complicate the process of retrieveal for an external party, and the IETF
cannot guarantee access to these vital documents, which is bad.

If you do not want to submit the entire specification to the IETF as an
RFC, prs.-types or vnd.-types should be used instead.

If you can argue well for you case, then I believe eventually the IESG
will make an exception, but this may take a considerable amount of time.

Most of this stems from personal experiences and opinions, so take it
simply as a piece of anecdotal knowledge, other people here will probably
amend and correct me extensively.

Linus