Re: Starting the ietf-xml-mime mailing list

[MURATA Makoto <murata@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Lilley wrote:
> It struck me as an entirely reasonable question, in particular since the
> RFC that defines text/xml and application/xml refers to "MIME-like
> protocols" which seems to imply that HTTP is not MIME (something I have
> heard asserted in the past).


RFC 2068(Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1) says:
----------------------------------------------------
19.4 Differences Between HTTP Entities and MIME Entities

   HTTP/1.1 uses many of the constructs defined for Internet Mail (RFC
   822) and the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME ) to allow
   entities to be transmitted in an open variety of representations and
   with extensible mechanisms. However, MIME [7] discusses mail, and
   HTTP has a few features that are different from those described in
   MIME.  These differences were carefully chosen to optimize
   performance over binary connections, to allow greater freedom in the
   use of new media types, to make date comparisons easier, and to
   acknowledge the practice of some early HTTP servers and clients.

Makoto
 
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