Re: [xml-dev] Registration status

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

> I doubt that's necessary in the general case.  It is typically
> sufficient that the media type is used to dispatch the processor
> that recognizes the root element, permitting further internal
> namespace dispatching independant of the media type.  That's the
> case for XHTML at least.

I'm not sure I follow this at all. You use the present case, but are
there any current applications that would work if the document was sent
as xhtml+xml but wouldn't if it was sent as xml? If the xnl file is
explicitly styled (with xslt or css) then surely just xml semantics is
sufficient. If not, then having it sent as xhtml+xml might allow a
default style to be applied (but as mozilla shows that's possible just
using the namespace, and the latter has definite advantages when you
discover elements in the mathml namespace half way down the page)



> This [dispatching on namespace] will happen eventually, but it can't
> yet be assumed that a receiving agent will dispatch on a namespace, or
> have any means of configuring namespace/processor bindings.  So for
> the next little while, there'll be some value in media types.

I'm not sure. Today I can have an xhtml+mathml document and on any
processor with a client side xslt (IE5/msxml3,IE6,Mozilla,NS6) I can
cause "whatever is needed" to happen on the client side by having the
client side XSLT transform the inline namespaced elements to whatever
that client needs to display that language. This works now, but a) I
don't know when the clients will be able to handle *+xml mime types out
of the box, and I don't know when if ever "basic" ISP's will allow
customisation of the outgoing types.

I want it to be as easy to put a xhtml+mathml page on the web as it is
to put an html page including tables. ie anyone with a dialup account to
ought be able to do it. If it means configuring the server to send
different mime types depending what's in the document, it doesn't really
work.

David




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