RE: Starting the ietf-xml-mime mailing list

[Murray Altheim <altheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ned Freed <Ned.Freed@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Larry Masinter <masinter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > MURATA Makoto <murata@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > > Are you also against specialized media types?  Or, you would like
> > > to make clear that specialized media types do not solve all problems?
> 
> > It's not clear that specialized media types solve any problem at all,
> > in the case of XML that already contains a document declaration.
> 
> On the contrary, it is very clear that they do solve at least some set of
> problems. There is no explanation for the large numbers of people happily
> registering these things otherwise. We have ample experience to tell us that
> people won't bother with this sort of administration unless they see some
> possible advantage to doing it, and won't continue to do it unless those
> advantages turn out to be real.

On the contrary, there may be a very plausible reason why 'large numbers of
people' are registering specialized media types: there is no suitable
alternative that is supported by the browser vendors at large. There may
be very real advantages in an organized content negotiation scheme, but
they can't be realized if there is no vendor support. I don't believe that
resorting to file extensions can possibly be the way of the future. We 
all need a better alternative.

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim, SGML Grease Monkey         <mailto:altheim&#64;eng.sun.com>
Member of Technical Staff, Tools Development & Support
Sun Microsystems, 901 San Antonio Rd., UMPK17-102, Palo Alto, CA 94303-4900

              An SGML declaration does not an i18n make.