[tei-council] [TEI-L] SV: TEI MIME type (fwd)

Kevin Hawkins kevin.s.hawkins at ultraslavonic.info
Fri Dec 11 09:04:31 EST 2009


I've been pondering this a bit, so I'm coming in late.  Nothing I say 
below influences our decision to go ahead with applying for a MIME type 
(which I support).

The original motivation for the MIME  type, as voiced on TEI-L, was to 
allow someone's browser or email client to open TEI XML files in a 
different program from other XML files.  That's all that was requested, 
there's nothing in James's "devil's advocate objections" (which I've 
included below) that would complicate accomplishing this simple goal. 
That is, (3) and (4), while possibly useful, were not requested.

In fact, (2) -- notation of XML -- is probably intended by the use case. 
  A user might want TEI files in SGML to be associated with a different 
program than the one used to open TEI files in XML.

Kevin

>> James, you did voice some objections--did you intend them to be strong
>> enough to halt the process, or no?
> 
> 
> I guess my devil's advocate objections could be summarised as:
> 
> 1) I've not been convinced that it is really useful to us either 
> on a marketing perspective or on an application-building 
> perspective, but I'm still willing to be convinced (the examples 
> so far haven't done it).  What would an application developer use 
> it for that there aren't better methods in existence already? 
> (And is then a MIME type really the answer?)
> 2) Theoretically XML is only the current vocabulary of what the 
> TEI uses...but that is only pendantry
> 3) If I say my document is application/tei+xml I haven't 
> communicated much information (is it P4, P5, P72?)
> 4) It seems to claim a document is 'TEI' but says nothing about 
> Conformance/Conformable/Non-Conformant or which schema.
> 5) If the TEI does this, then its main use (it seems to me) is in 
> HTTP Accept headers, which can take arbitrary parameters, as such 
> it might be useful to suggest recommended naming formats/values 
> for those parameters.
> 
> I don't think any of those are a deal-breaker by themselves, just 
> things I think the Council should be aware of in its decision.
> 
> -James
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