image/svg+xml

Hi,

I have some issues with 1.1 mime-type section in
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/intro.html

I believe 1.2 SVG MIME type to contain errors.

The section incorrectly states that the MIME type for svg is
"image/svg+xml" quoting RFC 3023, a document which says that that
mime-type SHOULD NOT be used.

I find the two documents to be incompatible, SVG 1.1 says use it, RFC
3023 says don't - RFC 3023 should hold weight.  Also it notes that
registration is underway - RFC 2048 says "Proposed media types are not
formally registered and must not be used"  So RFC's are clearly saying
that we should not be using such mime-types, so I do not agree that the
spec should tell us to.

Furthermore (and this is actually the more important issue) RFC 3023
defines the +xml suffix so as to allow generic processing, however SVG
1.1 says that the "image/svg+xml" mime-type is also the correct mime-type
for gzipped SVG content - this is incompatible with generic processing of
xml documents which do not expect gzipped content.

I would recommend solving these issues by either declaring a different
mime-type for gzipped (without the +xml suffix) and non-compressed svg.
Or remove gzipped svg from the specification and make it a requirement
that viewers support content-encoding, which is a very well established
and supported mechanism for delivering compressed content (why did SVG
re-invent the wheel?), I understand it is already supported by more SVG
User Agents than support gzipped content served as image/svg+xml .

Jim.

Received on Friday, 30 August 2002 13:03:29 UTC