The draft makes no mention of file extensions.
"Atom Feed and Entry Documents can have different processing models
and there are situations where they need to be differentiated."
It would be good to enumerate some of those situations, and to examine
whether processing software depending on file extensions also requires
such differentiation. If ithe processing model is different enough to
require distinction in the mime type, it's important enough to require
distinction in the file system where mime types usually are forgotten.
Server software responsible for inserting correct Content-type header
can *possibly* set the correct value when serving a file, if the
type="entry" and type="feed" documents have distinct file extensions.
(I think this server behavior is an accident of implementation,
because I've never encountered a mime type parameter in any
"mime.types" file or in the Windows registry).
Client software receiving a file similarly consults a mime types
registry. I do not think any client software today would correctly be
able to save the file with the correct file extension, because it
would have had to have been programmed to parse all the parameters
(including possible parameters to be defined in the future). If the
client software has this entry in its registry:
application/atom+xml; type="entry"
and receives a file with this header:
Content-type: application/atom+xml; type="entry"
or this
Content-type: application/atom+xml; gdatakind="event"; type="entry"
there's little chance existing client software will assign the correct
file extension to the saved file.
On the other hand, if the draft assigned a new mime type to denote
entries, all existing processing software on server and client side
would correctly map content-type to file extension.
Hugh
On 1/2/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
directories.
This draft is a work item of the Atom Publishing Format and Protocol Working
Group of the IETF.
Title : The application/atom+xml Type Parameter
Author(s) : J. Snell
Filename : draft-ietf-atompub-typeparam-00.txt
Pages : 6
Date : 2007-1-2
The Atom Syndication Format (RFC 4287) defines the 'application/
atom+xml' media type to identify both Atom Feed and Atom Entry
Documents. This document defines an optional 'type' parameter used
to differentiate the two types of Atom documents.
A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-typeparam-00.txt
--
Hugh Winkler
Wellstorm Development
http://www.wellstorm.com/
+1 512 694 4795 mobile (preferred)
+1 512 264 3998 office
