xml-dev - Re: standard compressed XML format?

[Mark Baker <mark.baker@Canada.Sun.COM>]

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
> Any thoughts?  I like the fact that XML is verbose when I'm editing and
> processing, but it's not so good in transmission.  I'd like to think that
> there's a good _general_ solution that will let us have the best of both
> worlds.

HTTP supports compression via Accept-Encoding and Content-Encoding.
The types of compression encodings currently registered are compress,
gzip, and deflate (in increasing order of use, AFAIK);

http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/http-parameters

You're right though, it does impact content-type, per HTTP 1.1;

19.4.3 Introduction of Content-Encoding

   MIME does not include any concept equivalent to HTTP/1.1's Content-
   Encoding header field. Since this acts as a modifier on the media
   type, proxies and gateways from HTTP to MIME-compliant protocols MUST
   either change the value of the Content-Type header field or decode
   the entity-body before forwarding the message. (Some experimental
   applications of Content-Type for Internet mail have used a media-type
   parameter of ";conversions=<content-coding>" to perform an equivalent
   function as Content-Encoding. However, this parameter is not part of
   MIME.)

I could see a generic XML-specific compression mechanism being
developed; one that understands what "<" and ">" mean.  But
you don't have to wait for that to compress your XML today.

MB
-- 
Friends don't let friends do RPC

***************************************************************************
This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers.
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@xml.org&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev
List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
***************************************************************************