 |
 |
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of > Alexander Johannesen > Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:00 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] MIME Type for MARC, Mods, etc.? > > On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 21:43, Rebecca S Guenther <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Patrick is right that an XML schema such as MODS or MARCXML would be > text/xml. > > I would strongly advise against text/xml, as it is an oxymoron (text > is not XML XML is not text even if it is delivered through a text > protocol), and more and more are switching away from the generic text > protocol (which makes little sense in structured data). According to RFC 3023, section 3 XML Media Types: If an XML document -- that is, the unprocessed, source XML document -- is readable by casual users, text/xml is preferable to application/xml. MIME user agents (and web user agents) that do not have explicit support for text/xml will treat it as text/plain, for example, by displaying the XML MIME entity as plain text. Application/xml is preferable when the XML MIME entity is unreadable by casual users. So it is justified to return a Content-Type header with text/xml. It depends upon whether you think MARC-XML, MODS, MADS, etc. are readable by casual users and the user agents you expect to be accessing the documents. > Hence, a more correct MIME type for XMLMARC would be > application/marc+xml, although until registered should be > application/x-marc+xml. I'm not sure the +xml is correct on two fronts. First RFC 2220 defines the media type for MARC binary, not MARC-XML, and it was my understanding that the +xml meant that the schema allowed extension by using XML namespaces which MARC binary does not. Further, in the case of MARC-XML, its schema also does not allow arbitrary XML elements. MODS and MADS I believe do, but that is a different story. Andy.