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

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

At 11:59 AM 27/10/01 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
>Elliotte Rusty Harold scripsit:
>> In the meantime, I think I'm going to start recommending the use of
>> application/xml and deprecating the use of text/xml. 

>Absolutely; as one poster said, it is one of the most important moves.
>It almost never makes sense to use text/xml, unless your text is cleverly
>arranged to be both WF XML and readable to someone who never heard of XML
>*or* i18n.

Hmm... in practical terms, using text/xml doesn't usually break
things, since most actual software, near as I can tell, cheerfully
ignores the RFC rules and figures out the actual encoding.

Doesn't mean the folks posting on this are wrong.  application/xml
is less likely to cause breakage when rules are being followed, 
and it's really hard to think of a good reason to use text/xml.  In 
particular, it seems counter-intuitive to expect J. Random Webserver
to know what encoding it's shipping out in the general case. 

-Tim