Subject: Re: Fwd: Last Call: XML Media Types to Proposed Standard

From: Paul Grosso <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 16:41:20 -0500

At 08:55 2000 08 17 +0900, MURATA Makoto wrote:
>Dan, Simon, and I have very slightly revised the I-D, on the basis of 
>comments in this ML and comments we directly received.  The new I-D is now 
>available at:
>
>	http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-murata-xml-07.txt

I note in section 3:

   For backward compatibility, application/xml and text/xml MAY, 
   but SHOULD NOT, also be used for "external parsed entities", 
   "external DTD subsets", and "external parameter entities".

I don't see how external DTD subsets or external parameter
entities could be parsed or accessed as application/xml or 
text/xml.  I'm concerned that, by allowing such entities
to be given an application/xml or text/xml MIME type, we
will be saying, for example, that XPointer can now be used
to access them (since XPointer is the fragment identifier
syntax for resources of MIME type application/xml and text/xml)
and yet such resources don't have infosets and accessing them
using an XPointer is not defined.

I don't fully understand the backward compatibility argument,
but I'd prefer not to allow application/xml and text/xml to be 
used on "external DTD subsets", and "external parameter entities".

paul