Re: Parameters for top-level XML media types?

[MURATA Makoto <murata@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>  XML documents have a double identity - they can be
> processed by generic XML processors and stored in generic repositories -
> and they also have specific content that may require a particular
> processor.  

We have agreed that generic XML processors cannot do anything useful.

In my mail "What we have agreed on" , I wrote:
> 
> 	3. Fallback to general-purpose XML applications is not useful.
> 
snip

> If these are agreed on, we can eliminate some options and concentrate on 
> the rest.
> 
> If you disagree with these four points, please speak up now.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Makoto
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
snip
> 3. Fallback to general-purpose XML applications is not useful.
> 
> "What's the XML parser going to do with this block of data? Display it? Not 
> terribly valuable. Get some namespace information from the inside and then 
> dispatch based on the namespace? Possibly valuable, but this begs the 
> question of why wasn't that information out in the MIME headers." (Paul)
> 
> "what experience has shown is that fallback
> strategies of *any* sort tend to be overrated. In almost every case something
> has messed it up. Either we got the granularity wrong (and I see a very good
> chance of this happening here given the emergence of alternative forms of XML),
> or it didn't prove to offer useful functionality, or it simply didn't deploy in
> the manner in which we envisioned. About the only success story we have,
> actually, are the image/audio/video top-level types, and while these have
> worked out tolerably well, their actual value to end users isn't that great." (Ned)
> 
> "Not even possible, in some cases. XML is being used for all sorts of
> things from serialising Java Beans to Web server configuration files to
> interprocess communication - a lot of these uses are not especially
> "displayable". In some cases, the fact that they are written in XML is
> the least important thing about them. These are likely to need
> specialised registrations, too.  Further, if the specification for any
> such case is not controlled by a single vendor, then registration in the
> vendor tree does not seem appropriate. This would be the case for
> situations ranging from a small vendor group (such as the Flashpix
> group) through groups such as W3C to bodies such as ISO, ITU, IEE and so
> on."  (Chris)
> 

Makoto
 
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