- From: C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@acm.org>
- Date: 17 Sep 2003 21:54:07 -0600
- To: MURATA Makoto <murata@hokkaido.email.ne.jp>
- Cc: ietf-xml-mime@imc.org, WWW-Tag <www-tag@w3.org>
On Wed, 2003-09-17 at 17:34, MURATA Makoto wrote: > On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 14:10:53 -0400 > Francois Yergeau <FYergeau@alis.com> wrote: > > > But stating that "most XML is not text for casual users" says that there is > > no loss in deprecating text/*xml (save perhaps transition issues), the text/ > > top-level buys nothing of value. > > Agreed. I'm sorry to see two people whose opinions I value so highly agreeing with a position that so troubles me. One of the most important characteristics of XML, as compared with many, many competing formats for the storage and/or transmission of data is that it is textual (in the sense of being conceptually a sequence of characters, and represented on the wire -- at least so far -- as such). Since much of the XML which I care about is also a digital representation of texts (in the sense of being natural-language utterances with a certain degree of intra-document linguistic and thematic cohesion), it troubles me to think that labeling XML as text buys us nothing of value. On the contrary, I think: it stresses two important facts. I assume that both of you are thinking primarily of browser fallback behavior, and reflecting your view that users will be able to make nothing of XML source if they are confronted with it -- in that context, I understand, the proposition you endorse is at least plausible. Even there, though, I don't find it compelling: much XML is quite legible to naive humans -- as legible as anything displayed without much intelligent formatting will ever be. And for some humans, almost all XML is legible without special tools. (I recognize that the latter group is a relatively small minority of the human population.) -C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Received on Wednesday, 17 September 2003 23:54:29 UTC