xml-dev - Re: XML media types revisited

[David LeBlanc <whisper@accessone.com>]

At 10:15 AM 1/15/99 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>David LeBlanc wrote:
>
>> I don't agree with the idea that XML is a replacement for ASCII.
>
>Figuratively, not literally.  The idea is that XML is meant to become
>the (near)ubiquitous way of expressing structured text or data, just as
>plain ASCII is the (near)ubiquitous way of expressing plain text
>or data.  (But not forever: Unicode plain text rulz!)
>
Ah! agreed!!

<snip>
>
>> Neither does "application" imply C, C++, Java or whatever else. In fact, I
>> wonder if "application/xml" is appropriate at all - does "application/RTF"
>> or "application/TROFF" make sense?
>
>Yes, very much so.  Troff source can and should be specified as
>"application/x-troff" and could be registered as "application/troff"
>if anyone wanted to bother.  But "text/x-troff" would be reasonable
>too, since much troff source can reasonably read as plain text.
>RTF source is usually too *busy* to be read as plain text, though.
>
>Anent the "application" top-level type, RFC 2046 saith:
>
># [...T]ypically either uninterpreted binary data or information to be
># processed by an application.  [... E]xpected uses for "application"
># include spreadsheets, data for mail-based scheduling systems, and
># languages for "active" (computational) messaging, and word
># processing formats that are not directly readable.
>

Ok, thanks for the clarification - I inferred that "application" meant
"runnable".

>-- 
>John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org

Dave LeBlanc

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