xml-dev - Re: Schema at XML namespace URI to change

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

At 08:52 AM 23/10/00 +0100, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
>Content negotiation!  There's actually literally nothing at the
>namespace URI, and the server is set up to return whats at
>..../namespace.html if the http GET is for text/html, and to return
>the ..../namespace.xsd if it's text/xml.

Ouch... the schema WG really ought to get around to proposing
a +xml media-type for .xsd, and use that... I appreciate that there
is no malice involved, but this smells like a land grab.

Hm... I also wonder if text/ is the right top-level type; some
would argue that xsd is not human-readable enough & thus application/
is more appropriate.  And some might argue that the list of
top-level media types

 { application, audio, image, message, model, multipart, text, video }

could use a new addition, "schema".  Probably not me though.

Er... I just fetched that with IE5.5, which *does* accept XML,
and I got the HTML version.  Hmm, have to look at the IE
accept headers.  I've always had crappy luck with content
negotiation, but lots of smart people think it's important,
so I guess the jury's out.

Anyhow, I think that Rick is right, that an 80/20 solution here,
file extension and/or content-negotiation, is perfectly OK for 
the short term and might turn out to be embarrassingly OK in the 
long term, just like that other famous 80/20 solution, the WWW. -T