Re: [reiserfs-list] [Fwd: Re: Magic is useless!]

[Hans Reiser <reiser namesys com>]

Raphael Bosshard wrote:

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
>
> Re: Magic is useless!
> From:
>
> Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>
> Date:
>
> Mon, 7 Jan 2002 12:24:14 -0500
> To:
>
> Sander Vesik <Sander Vesik Sun COM>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 07, 2002 at 02:07:00PM +0000, Sander Vesik wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> >
> > > > Most major file formats already have a detectable magic byte
> > > > signaturate, though some of the now prospering "human readable"
> > > > formats using XML or whatever are a thorn in the side (particularly
> > > > if they are compressed, grr). But this would be a good complement.
>
>    Been there for 2.5 year in the normalization process. XML totally
> outgrows the Mime-Type mechanism. Mime-Type is unfortuantely obsoleted
> in that work. Want an example ?:
>   Okay you can get the mime type for SMIL could be application/smil
>   (I'm too lazy to check). You can also get the Mime-Type for SVG
>   like graphic/svg. Now both the SMIL and the SVG spec expects to 
>   mix elements from each other in a single document (using namespaces
>   to do the coupling). Now tell me the Mime-Type of the document...
"set" or "directory" whose elements have various primitive types.

This is not to say that I disagree with your conclusion below, I just 
quibble.

>  A better approach is a list/hierarchy of 
> strings and not a single one, the list of namespaces name of
> a XML document, the list of mimetypes of a zip. To take the example
> of a ZIP format it could be:
>
>       (zip (image/gif,   xml/docbook,   image/gif))
>
>   to use a LISP like syntax. For a compound compressed XML document
>
> (gzip (application/xml (http://www.w3.org/2001/svg http://www.w3.org/)))