MimeType and charset

Dear XMLSig WG,

The W3C Internationalization WG and IG (Interest Group)
are currently looking at the XMLSig spec to do their
Last Call review.

We have already come up with a number of issues and hope
that we can send them to you soon.

One point where we have difficulties because we don't
know whether we understand the specification are the
MimeType and Charset information on <Transform>.

If you can answer or comment to the following questions,
this will help us understand what the intent of these
things is, so that we can comment on them.


- There is MimeType and Charset. What about other
  parameters in e.g. an http Content-Type header,
  or information of similar function in other headers?

- Identifying/classifying the referenced object when it comes
  into the Transform chain may be a problem and may warrant
  such parameters, but if there is a need to carry any kind
  of information between the transforms, shouldn't this be
  handled as an implementation issue? So shouldn't these
  parameters be on <Reference>, if anywhere, rather than
  on <Transform>?

- What about replacing such parameters by Transforms with
  a defined result? I don't know how this would apply to
  MimeType, but it certainly makes sense for Charset.

- If the resource is retrieved e.g. with HTTP, there will
  be three places e.g. for 'charset' information:
  - The HTTP header
  - Some info inside the document
  - The info in the Transform
  If they differ, what's the priority? Please note that
  already for the first two, things are rather complicated,
  and adding a third one won't make things easier.


Looking forward to discussing these issues,


Regards,   Martin.
  


#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, I18N Activity Lead, World Wide Web Consortium
#-#-#  mailto:duerst@w3.org   http://www.w3.org/People/D%C3%BCrst

Received on Tuesday, 14 March 2000 01:22:08 UTC