Re: XBL media type?

On 9/7/06, Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@x-port.net> wrote:
>
> However, none of that detracts from Mark Nottingham's point (there are
> a lot of Marks here!) that this is surely an issue for the TAG.
> Certainly you would think that if there is a document type that is
> significant in its own right (i.e., is more than 'mere' XML) and for
> which there may be alternatives, a MIME type is pretty important.

Right.  I think a lot of XML folks assume that namespaces somehow
remove the need for media types, but that's just not the case.
Because namespaces are intrinsic rather than extrinsic with respect to
the data they describe, there's some non-trivial tradeoffs being made
in such an assumption (that I've discussed, and the TAG finding does
too).

The "Web of XML" is a subset of the "Web", not a separate entity, and
so needs to play by the same rules as the rest of the Web, lest nasty
things happen when they meet (e.g. the evolvability problem).

I suppose I'll just shut up now and defer to authority by pointing at
that TAG finding and suggesting that we should try to be consistent
with this finding unless we have good reasons not to be.

So, what might the good reasons be not to define an XBL2 media type?

Mark.

Received on Friday, 8 September 2006 01:58:51 UTC