Re: Media types and versioning

On 5/16/07, Marc de Graauw <mdegraau@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Mark Baker:
> > AFAICT, that's more or less what happens in the existing Web
> > architecture.  HTTP messages carrying a document also normally include
> > a media type, which is essentially a name for a series of compatible
> > versions (e.g. "text/html" as a shortcut for HTML 2 + 3.2 + 4.01 + 5
> > etc..).
>
> Yes, but the list is not explicit, so it is not possible to exclude
> versions (you cannot say: do not process if your version is lower than
> 4.01). That is not necessary for HTML, but for other languages (like
> medication, which example I use in my XML.COM article) it often is, and
> that is the mechanism I wanted to describe in my article.

I think that your problem could be solved simply by minting a new
media type when you break backwards compatibility.

Mark.