Re: NOTATION/MIME (was Re: Recent XML WG decisions)

Peter Murray-Rust (Peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Sun, 14 Sep 1997 12:28:50 GMT

Thanks very much Rick,
In message <199709141028.UAA14599@jawa.chilli.net.au> "Rick Jelliffe" writes:
[...]
> The standard way to stick a MIME type into a system identifier is
> given as part of HyTime '97. First we have a notation declaration
> (which is really only for documentation, so you don't need it
> if you don't want it).
>
> <!NOTATION mimetype PUBLIC "-//IETF/RFC1521//NOTATION
> FSISM PORTABLE
> MIME Content Type//EN"><!-- Refer RFC 1700 -->

Being picky, this is not valid XML since prod [74] requires a SystemLiteral
as well as the PubidLiteral.
>
> This notation declaration allows us to use "mimetype" in
> Formal System Identifiers, which are system identifiers with
> little pseudo-start tags giving the notation used in the rest
> of the string. So we can then declare the notation "gif"
> to be the mime type "image/gif" by
>
> <!NOTATION gif SYSTEM "<mimetype>Content-Type=image/gif">

This is fine for my purposes, but I'm not clear how it fits with the XML spec.
4.3.2 says:
'The SystemLiteral that follows the keyword SYSTEM [...] is a URL, ...'
It says nothing about SystemLiterals which follow the PubidLiteral (your
example is clearly not a URL). So my reading of the XML spec is that your
code above is invalid XML :-). If so, it would be useful if the WG had some way
that it was allowed.

[...]
P.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection
Virtual School of Molecular Sciences
http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/