application/beep+xml

[Dan Kohn <[e-mail]>]

I finally took the time to review
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-beep-framework-05.txt> and
<http://www.bxxp.org>, and I would like to suggest that text/xml is probably
not the best MIME type to use for your BEEP channel management and profile
configuration.

Among other things:

+ In Section 2.2.2.2, you constrain what is acceptable beyond well-formed
and valid XML (e.g., internal entity declarations are not allowed).

+ It is hard to imagine any scenario where the BEEP channel management
should be presented to users, since it is explicitly designed for process to
process communications.

+ You don't have line-ending conversion issues to deal with, since CRLF is
mandated.

+ The fact that you recommend against a DOCTYPE declaration in Section
2.2.2.2 (even though DTDs are defined in section 7) means that if BEEP XML
gets out in the wild, it will be more difficult to identify.  The custom
MIME type would provide that identification.

I would suggest that you review <http://www.imc.org/draft-murata-xml> (which
has finished last call and will hopefully soon be approved by the IESG).  I
don't know if something like application/beep+xml would meet your needs, but
I am at least fairly certain that application/xml would be a better choice
than text/xml.  

Given sections 3.1.2 and 4.1.2 of the BEEP framework, it seems that you
might also want to consider registering application/tls+xml and
application/sasl+xml.  Or alternatively, you could have the SASL and TLS
DTDs referenced as external entities to the core BEEP DTD, and get by with
just application/beep+xml.  (Note that there is no explicit one-to-one
mapping between DTDs and MIME types, although such a mapping would be
especially useful when DOCTYPE declarations are discouraged.)

Separately, I would suggest that in Section 2.2.1.2, you should normatively
reference serial number arithmetic as defined in RFC 1982.  Finally,
Appendix E of RFC 2396 deprecates the use of "URL:" as in
<URL:http://www.iana.org/>.

		- dan
--
Dan Kohn <mailto:[e-mail]>
<http://www.dankohn.com>  <tel:[phone]>