RE: Starting the ietf-xml-mime mailing list

[Ned Freed <Ned.Freed@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > > 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, it sounds to me like you are agreeing with me, not disagreeing. All I
ever claimed was that contrary to Larry's assertion, it is clear that a real
problem is being solved by registering various XML-derived types. I never
claimed that this is the correct solution to the problem, or that this is the
only problem around that needs a solution, or that this wasn't a solution
forced by the current characteristics of browsers.

And nowhere did I say that file extensions are being used. These
are MIME types, not file extensions.

				Ned