[Zope3-dev] Re: XML header and TAL interpretor

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Tonico Strasser wrote:
> Philipp von Weitershausen schrieb:
> 
>> Tonico Strasser wrote:
>>
>>> Philipp von Weitershausen schrieb:
>>>
>>>
>>>> If we make XML the default mode, I don't see how it would impact IE
>>>> very
>>>> much.
>>>
>>>
>>> IE would try to dowload HTML pages not served as text/html. Pages in XML
>>> mode should be served as XML not text/html.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think that last sentence is a bit strong and IMO even plain wrong.
>> ZPT's mode of operation has nothing to do with how it's served in an
>> HTTP response. 
> 
> 
> I thougth this is part of the XML spec. No?
> 
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/07/21/dive.html
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3023.txt

The RFC you cite here introduces five (!) new media types for XML, two
of which are text/xml and application/xml. So that's already ambiguous.
Apart from that, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3236.txt introduces
application/xhtml+xml, also a valid XML content type, for XHTML in
particular (of course, I bet that IE won't accept it so pragmatism wins
over RFC-compliance here and we have to stick with text/html). As for
other XML dialects, there are even content types that aren't text/* or
applicaton/* and still deal with XML, e.g. image/svg+xml for SVG
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVG12-20041027/mimereg.html).

The point of all this is that text/xml just isn't enough. It's a good
fallback, but it's not enough, especially including serving HTML. From
that I conclude that the "should" in your sentence above is wrong.

Philipp