RE: RDF Media Type

Aaron Swartz [mailto:aswartz@upclink.com] wrote:

>I've taken Dan Connolly's rough draft[1] and tried to put it together into
a
>media type proposal:
>
>http://blogspace.com/rdf/mimetype
>
>I'd appreciate comments, corrections and suggestions.
>
>[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/03mr/rdf_mt
>
>-- 
>Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>|               RSS Info
>  <http://www.aaronsw.com>   |   <http://www.blogspace.com/rss/>
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Just a quick question: why _application_/rdf+xml and not _text_/rdf+xml?
After all, isn't RDF human readable as well?

RFC2046:
"text -- textual information.  The subtype "plain" in
          particular indicates plain text containing no
          formatting commands or directives of any sort. Plain
          text is intended to be displayed "as-is". No special
          software is required to get the full meaning of the
          text, aside from support for the indicated character
          set. Other subtypes are to be used for enriched text in
          forms where application software may enhance the
          appearance of the text, but such software must not be
          required in order to get the general idea of the
          content.  Possible subtypes of "text" thus include any
          word processor format that can be read without
          resorting to software that understands the format.  In
<<<<<<< true for RDF/XML/HTML also
          particular, formats that employ embeddded binary
          formatting information are not considered directly
          readable. A very simple and portable subtype,
          "richtext", was defined in RFC 1341, with a further
          revision in RFC 1896 under the name "enriched".

"application -- some other kind of data, typically
          either uninterpreted binary data or information to be
          processed by an application.  The subtype "octet-
          stream" is to be used in the case of uninterpreted
          binary data, in which case the simplest recommended
          action is to offer to write the information into a file
          for the user.  The "PostScript" subtype is also defined
          for the transport of PostScript material.  Other
          expected uses for "application" include spreadsheets,
          data for mail-based scheduling systems, and languages
          for "active" (computational) messaging, and word
          processing formats that are not directly readable.
<<<<<<<<<<< RDF, like XML/HTML/etc, *is* directly readable
          Note that security considerations may exist for some
          types of application data, most notably
          "application/PostScript" and any form of active
          messaging.  These issues are discussed later in this
          document"

regards

Lee

Received on Monday, 23 April 2001 08:17:56 UTC