[XHR] What mime types should trigger XML parsing?

The draft says:

"Otherwise, if the Content-Type header contains a media type  
(ignoring any parameters) that is either text/xml, application/xml,  
or ends in +xml, it must be an object that implements the Document  
interface representing the parsed document. If the document was not  
an XML document, or if the document could not be parsed (due to an  
XML well-formedness error or unsupported character encoding, for  
instance), it must be null."

Should this be taken to mean that for any other Content-Type,  
implementations MUST NOT attempt to parse as XML? If so, please say  
that. Optionally allowing XML parsing for types not specifically  
mentioned would be bad for interoperability.

Also, consider the following media types that represent XML data of  
some form, but are not text/xml, application/xml, or a type that ends  
in +xml. Some of these are unofficial or obsolete:

text/xsl
text/mathml
text/xml-external-parsed-entity
application/xml-external-parsed-entity
application/smil

Of these, I only know for sure that text/xsl is in common use for  
sending XML content, even though it is unofficial and technically  
illegal.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Sunday, 23 April 2006 00:34:12 UTC