Re: registering formats in the web [uriMediaType-9] [Fwd: Request for MIME media type Application/Personal Tree - prs.]

On 2/18/06, Paul Libbrecht <paul@activemath.org> wrote:
> Mark Baker wrote
> > Are you perhaps thinking that the URI in the parameter could be used
> > to dispatch applications?  If so, I don't think that's workable as
> > virtually all (AFAICT) software that dispatches off media types, does
> > it off the media type name independent of the value of any parameters.
> >
> can you be more precise here ?
> Does this mean that some intermediates loose the parameters ?
> Or does this mean that applications don't use ?

The latter, yes.

> In the latter case, it's just a matter, for the applications, to use it.
> Or ?

Well, that's a whole lot of deployed code to change.  Moreover, as I
mentioned earlier, it would seem to require a coordinated upgrade of
all software otherwise you'd have the upgraded part of the Web
behaving incompatibly with the non-upgraded part.

I'd also argue that it's correct to ignore the parameters for
dispatching.  The media type name (minus parameters) is basically an
alias for a compatible sequence of specifications (e.g. "text/html"
vs. HTML 2.0, HTML 3.2, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, ...), and so it makes
sense to associate that with a chunk of software which can process
those specifications.

Mark.
--
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.       http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Monday, 20 February 2006 02:58:54 UTC