Re: [XHR] What mime types should trigger XML parsing?

On Apr 23, 2006, at 11:45, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 02:34:08 +0200, Maciej Stachowiak  
> <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>> "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.
>
> So instead of "If the document was not an XML document" having "If  
> Content-Type did not contain such a media type"?

And we would list a few media types that must be parsed as XML? I  
don't expect the list to grow, all the new ones likely follow the  
+xml rule.

> application/xsl-xml (note the dash...)

This dates back from when the proposal was to have -xml instead of  
+xml. You'll also find some amount of image/svg-xml (which alas ASV  
accepts).

>> text/xml-external-parsed-entity
>> application/xml-external-parsed-entity
>
> Are these supported?

They probably shouldn't be since they cannot always be represented as  
Documents (but as DocumentFragments).

>> 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.
>
> Any proposals? Personally I don't really care about any of them...

I don't really care either, I'd be happy with a/x, t/x, and +xml.

-- 
Robin Berjon
    Senior Research Scientist
    Expway, http://expway.com/

Received on Sunday, 23 April 2006 13:57:28 UTC