Re: [xml-dev] Text/xml with omitted charset parameter

[MURATA Makoto <EB2M-MRT@asahi-net.or.jp>]

>An improvement would have been to say only the XML declaration or text
>declarations in external entities matter, other information is ignored
>unless set explicitly, conforming processors most not assume anything,
>rules are defined in XML 1.0, content providers should never ever use
>text/xml for XML documents. XML improves only the situation on your
>local hard drive, XML in MIME envoirements (read: XML on the Web)
>deteriorates the situation and that's very disappointing.

No matter what we write in specifications, people will use text/xml
(even if we had not registered it).  For example, at W3C, I have
argued that SOAP must use application/xml rather than text/xml, but my
comments have not been accepted yet.

What we can do is to correctly document text/xml and application/xml, and 
I believe RFC 3023 has done the job.  If you have any specific suggestions 
for improvements of RFC 3023, please send them to the ietf-xml-mime ML.

We will eventually learn (1) when to use text/* and when to use application/*, 
and (2) how to use the charset parameter.  I believe that the situation is 
better than three years ago.

Cheers,

Makoto