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- From: "Paul Langer" <Paul.Langer@softwareag.com>
- To: "Matthew Sergeant (EML)" <Matthew.Sergeant@eml.ericsson.se>, "'XML-Dev Mailing list'" <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 15:38:00 +0200
At Tuesday, April 27, 1999 12:53 PM Matthew Sergeant wrote:
> [snip]
> If I'm returning application/xml I shouldn't return a charset
>at all - that's up to the end application. I should only return a charset if
>the user wants to return text/xml.
>
>Is that the consensus on this list?
No.
Please see "XML Media Types" (RFC 2376, http://www.imc.org/rfc2376) and
the related mailing list "ietf-xml-mime" (http://www.imc.org/ietf-xml-mime/).
RFC 2376 says:
"3.2 Application/xml Registration
MIME media type name: application
MIME subtype name: xml
Mandatory parameters: none
Optional parameters: charset
Although listed as an optional parameter, the use of the charset
parameter is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, ..."
I think "application/xml" and "text/xml" should be handled the same whereever
possible. On the logical level, XML documents are always text, since they
contain nothing but characters. "application/xml" is only necessary since
"text/..." implies restrictions on the used encoding (not relevant for
8bit clean protocolls like HTTP).
See the discussion list mentioned above for other views on the purpose of
XML media types (dispatching).
All the best,
Paul
-----------------------------------------------------------
Paul Langer PL@softwareag.com
Software AG Tel. +49-6151-92-1912
Uhlandstr. 12 Fax +49-6151-92-1613
D-64297 Darmstadt
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