RE: xinclude fails to use URI syntax for referring to resources?

At 11:13 AM -0800 1/7/04, Jonathan Marsh wrote:
>Perhaps my second draft is better?
>
><note>
>	<p>A key feature of XInclude is that it allows a resource to be
>cast to a user-specifed type for inclusion (XML or text).

That doesn't sound 100% accurate to me. It implies other things like 
"image/jpeg" or "text/rtf" can somehow be cast to XML. I'd prefer to 
make the sentence more specific and avoid the word cast, something 
like

A key feature of XInclude is that it allows a resource to be treated 
as text/plain instead of its declared MIME media type.


>When I describe the problem that way, there is an improvement we could
>make.  We could say that if the returned media type is actually
>application/xml or text/xml, the fragment syntax is interpreted as an
>xpointer, and a separate xpointer attribute is not necessary.  Resources
>returned with other media types rely on the xpointer attribute.

As an implementer this strikes me as very messy. I'm often reading a 
document out of a file or an InputStream that does not have an 
available MIME media type. Nor do I much want to have to have 
complicated web 2^N options depending on whether there is or is not 
an xpointer attribute, is or is not a fragment identifier, is or is 
not a MIME type, the MIME type is or is not XML, etc.
-- 

   Elliotte Rusty Harold
   elharo@metalab.unc.edu
   Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
   http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA

Received on Wednesday, 7 January 2004 15:27:14 UTC