RE: text/xhtml+xml vs. application/xhtml+xml: msg#00046 ietf.xml-mime

This is a subtle issue that very few document creators will understand. The
vast majority of XML (including, I would argue, the example below) is
considered unreadable by most users. For more evidence, think of the years
of complaints about "quotable-unreadable" MIME encoding, which just has a
few hex substitutions and = signs.

It's much better to pick one MIME type for each media type then to try to
pass on the decision to folks who won't understand or won't care about the
subtlety. That one type, IMHO, should almost always be application/foo+xml
not text/foo+xml.

- dan
--
Dan Kohn <mailto:dan@xxxxxxxxxxx>
<http://www.dankohn.com> <tel:+1-650-327-2600>

-----Original Message-----
From: Gavin Thomas Nicol [mailto:gtn@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, 2000-10-24 17:02
To: ietf-xml-mime@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: text/xhtml+xml vs. application/xhtml+xml

> I think the general consensus of the MIME community is that making HTML
> a subtype of "text/" was a mistake. While it is possible to write HTML
> which is readable "to some extent" as plain text, the HTML that is
> generated by a typical MUA or HTML editor is so full of useless cruft
> that it doesn't qualify. Perhaps a determined human being can read the
> text "to some extent" but the typical human gives up.

Well, these tools would be far better off using application/html in my
mind (for many, even application/html is too kind).

> So IMHO we should learn from this experience and make XHTML and other
> XML-ish things subtypes of application/.

I disagree. We should have both application/ and text/ depending on
the intent. For example, I believe the following would correctly be
text/xml while and SVG image would be better application/svg+xml.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xml" href="/stylesheets/article.xsl"?>
<article>
<title>Patently Ridiculous Patents</title>
<sideline>
<img src="/images/dogbert.gif" alt="Dogbert at the patent office">
<caption>Dogbert at the patent office</caption>
</img>
</sideline>
<body>
<p>Patently Ridiculous Patents - There has been a literal explosion of
internet related patent recently. Many of these patents are trivial,
but still the cost of defineding against them will have an impact on
companies worldwide.</p>
<p>Some examples:
<ul>
<li>Information Architects now has a patent on dynamic composition for
syndication.</li>
<li>Sunil Paul got a patent (6,052,709) for email spam filtering.</li>
<li>Shmuel Shaffer, William Beyda and Paul Bonomo, received patent
6,092,114 for filtering attachments to make the easily viewable
on the target system.</li>
<li>Dan Kikinis, of Saratoga, Calif., won a patent (6,085,232) for
the DataLink Systems Corporation in San Diego for a paging
system embedded in a computer keyboard.</li>
<li>Sanjay Agraharam, Lee Begeja, Carroll Creswell, Ram Ramamurthy
and Sandeep Sibal received patent 6,085,231 for a combined voice
and e-mail system that allows subscribers to get both just by
looking in their e-mail box. The system converts voice mail into
e-mail. The system then converts the voice message into text or
a .wav file, formats either one as an e-mail and sends it to the
recipient.</li>
</ul></p>
<p>Makes one wonder where it's all going to stop...</p>
</body>
</article>

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