Re: External parsed entities (Re: Inconsistency between IETF and W3C...)

MURATA Makoto wrote:
> 
> Chris Lilley wrote:
> > Yes. My concern is that the question "is this thing, returned as
> > application/xml, actually xml or not" should *not* have multiple
> > answers.
> 
> In general, MIME types can never provide all information about the
> content.  You have to read the MIME body.  The MIME type only tells
> you which program can read the MIME body.

Ok, so even allowing that, if "which program" is an XML parser and you
feed it a non well formed document, what happens? I would regard
"mandatory fatal error" as being synonymous with "can't read the
document"

> In the case of external parsed entities, your point is that application/xml
> or text/xml do not provide enough information, since XML processors cannot
> handle external parsed entities directly.

Sort of.

>  You would lilke the MIME header to
> say "I do not parse as an XML document, but don't throw me away.  I parse as
> an external parsed entity."

Yes. Even more, though, I care about the converse case; in the case of
applications/xml, it should always be the case that it is xml. If it is
not, then it is an error, rather than being "a little used case which is
actually legal but we dodn't expect people to use it directly".

> 
> If some programs that can handle external parsed entities directly (i.e.,
> without using XML processors for XML documents that reference to them),
> your point perfectly makes sense. 

Your point seems to ignore resource discovery, indexing, and other
routes to finding resources that may not have been intended to be found,
or found first, or found before other documents in whose context they
were intended to be used.


> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Makoto
> 
> Fuji Xerox Information Systems
> 
> Tel: +81-44-812-7230   Fax: +81-44-812-7231
> E-mail: murata.makoto@fujixerox.co.jp

Received on Friday, 3 December 1999 06:00:10 UTC