Ian Hickson wrote:
In the Web Apps 1.0 world, an HTTP message whose headers say text/html is an HTML document, regardless of what sequence of bytes the body of the message actually say. An HTTP message whose headers say text/xml, or use some other XML MIME type, is an XML document. It's the MIME type that decides how it is processed. If it is processed as an HTML document, then it _is_ an HTML document, possibly with errors. So says the spec.
And other specs say other things. The document can be more than one thing at once. If it's well-formed, it is XML. Maybe it's HTML too, though I do think you're confusing what it's processed as with what it is.
Furthermore I disagree that that the MIME type describes how a document is processed. This is provably false. I routinely process documents as other than their MIME type says.
The MIME type is a hint the server provides saying how it sees this document. The client is free to follow that hint or not. Different clients can and will choose different processing that suits their needs. The server does not know and cannot control what the client does.
-- Elliotte Rusty Harold [EMAIL PROTECTED] Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
