RE: BASE64 (was Re: CDATA)

[Suresh Babu Koya <skoya@quark.co.in>]

Has anyone seen SVGMaker. It uses BASE64 encoding to encode binary data and
XLink to resolve this
binary data. This looks like a nice way to handle Binary data in XML.

<image id="image0005" width="100%" height="100%" preserveAspectRatio="none"
xlink:href="data:image/png;base64,
iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABIAAAARCAYAAADQWvz5AAAAh0lEQVR4nNWTwQrD
MAxDn/bjdb/87dKwtkuXFMZgAl9io8hSEpVZJFFNr/eYZhlgmiiJImvSX0EdVlGH
EyjPM/nkUbIKIMt7j3UTsmSoCBDwrGhfBapzq0EJXE5AjUn2PtFR1i75WvzTippn
ta148G+UWg8tyZeQidSu/eLeO7qD3/+1/yN6AqKDQ3pfgS9WAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC"/>

-----Original Message-----
From: Seairth Jacobs [mailto:seairth@seairth.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 12:19 AM
To: xml-dev
Subject: BASE64 (was Re: CDATA)


I still don't see why a <![BASE64[ ]]> isn't added.

1) Nothing needs escaping.

2) The encoded form falls neatly into all content encoding forms (I think),
so parsers don't have to switch between "character" and "octet" hats.

3) When someone asks "how do I handle binary?", the answer would be a flat
"<![BASE64[ ]]>" instead of "Well, can do this... or this... or this... and
you are responsible to all encoding/decoding".  I suspect much less
grumbling will occur.

4) For anyone arguing that it causes bloat: why are you using XML in the
first place then?

5) It's a clean, simple, and well-used technique.

6) It's about as 80/20 a solution as I can think of.

So why not add it?

---
Seairth Jacobs
seairth@seairth.com