RE: text/xml for SOAP (and XP) considered harmful

>In fact, this is typical of much data expressed in XML, and is part of the
>intention of the semantic web, namely that the same information is viewable
>by casual users (via a style sheet) and processable by an application
>looking for semantically-bound elements.

An author cannot assume that any sort of processor will be activated in
response to a namespace or xml-stylesheet declaration.  See draft-murata-xml
section 3, last paragraph;

   An XML document labeled as text/xml or application/xml might contain
   namespace declarations, stylesheet-linking processing instructions
   (PIs), schema information, or other declarations that might be used
   to suggest how the document is to be processed. For example, a
   document might have the XHTML namespace and a reference to a CSS
   stylesheet. Such a document might be handled by applications that
   would use this information to dispatch the document for appropriate
   processing.

Note "might".  I do agree though, that once these assumptions can be
made, they will be of great use.  In the meantime though, we've got to
manage the problem.

I like application/xp+xml, but we don't have to decide that for a while yet.

MB