RE: Media types

To a certain extent, I think the discussion hasn't been very useful though.
At the end of the day, a piece of software has to do something with the
document (does that include the content-type?).  In the example given, the
piece of software would be an XSLT piece of software, not HTML software.  I
think the mess of content-type, namespaces, first element and manifests
would be far better served if we talked about how the software uses the
current set of solutions, the problems that arise with that, and potential
solutions in the context of the software.  Yes, it's the age old use-case
driven approach but it always works.

I tend to agree with TimBL because the first child is the first thing a
piece of software has to understand, therefore it is most useful to be able
to route to the right piece of software.  Although this point tends to be
somewhat moot because a lot of software will do the right thing with the
document even if the content-type was wrong because the URL is the main
routing component, not the content-type.

Cheers,
Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xml-dist-app-request@w3.org
> [mailto:xml-dist-app-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Mark Baker
> Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 7:44 AM
> To: Paul Prescod
> Cc: www-tag@w3.org; xml-dist-app@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Media types
>
>
> > Consider this example from the XSLT specification:
> >
> > <html xsl:version="1.0"
> >       xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
> >       xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/strict">
> >   <head>
> >     <title>Expense Report Summary</title>
> >   </head>
> >   <body>
> >     <p>Total Amount: <xsl:value-of
> select="expense-report/total"/></p>
> >   </body>
> > </html>
> >
> > It's a perfect example. This document is logically XSLT, not HTML.
>
> In this example, I'd say it's both HTML and XSLT.  However, HTML has
> the advantage in determining how that XSLT should be
> interpreted, since
> it's the container.
>
> For example, if HTML had an element called "do-not-process" that meant
> that any content whtin should not be dispatched to alternate
> processors,
> and that your XSLT was within this element, would you still
> say it was a
> stylesheet?
>
> I agree with TimBL when he says;
>
> "The significance of any nesting of one withing the other is
> to be defined by
> the nesting (outermost) specification [...]"
>
> (from http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Jan/0081.html )
>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
> Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.      mbaker@planetfred.com
> http://www.markbaker.ca   http://www.planetfred.com
>

Received on Tuesday, 15 January 2002 14:09:28 UTC