Because the authors of SOAP and SOAP Messages with Attachments specified that the content type for a SOAP envelope to be text/xml despite the compelling arguments such as you have outlined below. You are correct that application/xml is more correct than text/xml (at least as far as I am concerned;-) Of course, I have (as have others) been lobbying for a more succinct media type for the SOAP envelope, specifically application/soap+xml. The jury is still out on that one I think (I hope;-) Cheers, Chris Dan Weinreb wrote: > > In the Example of a Payload Container (section 7.4.1, line 505), the > Content-Type is shown as being application/xml , whereas in the > Header Container Example (section 7.3.2, line 474), the Content-Type > is text/xml . Why? > > The guideline for this distinction seems to be RFC 3023, section 3, bottom > of page 4: > > 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. > > That does not seem to explain what's going on in the examples. It's > hard to see why the SOAP document in the header container is more > textual and less applicationlike than the Invoice document in the > payload container. > > -- Dan > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription > manager: <
http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl > begin:vcard n:Ferris;Christopher tel;cell:508-667-0402 tel;work:781-442-3063 x-mozilla-html:FALSE org:Sun Microsystems, Inc;XTC Advanced Development adr:;;;;;; version:2.1 email;internet:
chris.ferris@east.sun.com title:Sr. Staff Engineer fn:Christopher Ferris end:vcard