xml-dev - Re: How to use binary data with XML?

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

John Cowan wrote:
> 
> > (2)  Just like in HTML, binary data is _referenced_ by the XML document,
> > correct?
> 
> Typically.  Nothing prohibits you from encoding binary data as
> Base64 and incorporating it into an XML document, but nobody has
> converters for that yet either.

Actually, I've seen bunches of those; there's no difficulty in
writing them.  Just define a way to tag the binary data as
whatever you wanted ... maybe something like

	<mime content-type="... some MIME content type ...">
	... Base 64 encoded content ...
	</mime>

There's an article on www.xml.com from last year sometime on this
topic; I don't recall how technical it is, you should be able to
make something like the above "<mime...> element work quite easily.

Some folk prefer such "inlined" data for its improved latency;
embedding references might lead to better storage structures.

- Dave

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