Re: Positions on "List of issues"

[Paul Langer <[e-mail]>]

Rick Jelliffe wrote
(http://www.imc.org/ietf-xml-mime/mail-archive/msg00064.html): 
> In particular, I think we are missing a key distinction that the MIME
> content-type is not so much the "type" of a resource, but the type of a
> particular *publication* of a resource.

I disagree with this definiton of the semantics of "MIME content-type".

As far as I know, the MIME mechanism is the only mechanism for data typing
that is available today on the Internet. The HTTP/1.1 spec
(http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.1/draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-rev-06.txt)
says:
"3.7 Media Types
     HTTP uses Internet Media Types [17] in the Content-Type (section
     14.17) and Accept (section 14.1) header fields in order to provide
     open and extensible data typing and type negotiation."

XML is portable data; the particular use of this data should not be
specified by the "publisher". The user should be able to detect the
data type and then select an application that he/she likes. How can a
"publisher" know, what applications are available at the user's site?

All the best,
Paul   

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