RE: Parameters for top-level XML media types?

["Langer, Paul" <pl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

at Thursday, May 06, 1999 6:55 PM Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> [snip]
> You _can_ store XML documents as plain old
> text files in plain old file systems - but you can also store your XML
> documents in a data store that uses the internal structure of the document
> to keep it hierarchically.  
> [snip] 
> Having meaningful MIME types to describe that information would be much
> more useful than finagling namespaces and reading into multiple portions
> of a document to figure out what exactly it contains.
> [snip]

We are currently developing "a data store that uses the internal structure
of
the document to keep it hierarchically".
I see no chance for media types to be of any help for determining the
structure of XML documents. Do you think of one media type for each and 
every DTD (or whatever schema we use tomorrow)?
XML promises to be self-describing data; if it is not possible to get all
necessary information out of the XML document itself, something is
broken in XML.  

All the best,
Paul

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Paul Langer                           PL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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