Re: [relax-ng] Encoding declaration, MIME type

[James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>]

> MIME people have different opinion about text/*.  See:
>
> http://www.imc.org/ietf-xml-mime/mail-archive/msg00204.html

Do these arguments a really apply to RNC?  In that message, Ned says:

> In practice the text/richtext, text/enriched, and
> text/html applications actually produce is typically an unreadable mess
> -- in some cases even by someone fully familiar with the format.

I don't think this will be the case with RNC; I suspect it will be mostly 
handwritten.

Let's look at some concrete scenarios.  Imagine that we use text/something 
for RNC.

1. Suppose some user opens an RNC file in their browser.  Because it's 
text/something, it get's displayed as plain text.  As I understand it, the 
argument is that this is a bad thing because if the user is non-technical, 
they will be confused/annoyed by seeing this RNC stuff which they can't 
understand.  The difficulty I see with this argument is this: if the user 
doesn't want to see the RNC, why are they trying to open the thing with the 
browser in the first place?  In the normal course of events, a random 
non-technical user won't end up opening RNC in their browser. The question 
should be not "would this be readable by a typical internet user?" but 
rather "would this be readable by somebody who is typical of those who 
might choose to open an RNC entity in their browser?".  It's different from 
something like application/postscript: a typical user might well come 
across a PostScript file, and a typical user does not want to see the 
source to the PostScript, rather they want to print it out or look at it 
with a previewer.

2. Suppose a user receives a RNC file as MIME part.  Because it's 
text/something, it get's displayed as plain text. Is this bad?  I don't see 
it.  Why would somebody send a non-technical user a RNC file?  It's 
different from something like text/css, where the CSS file might well be 
sent to a non-technical user as part of a message containing an HTML file. 
The behaviour most appropriate for a typical recipient of an RNC file seems 
to me to be to display it as plain text.

James