[topicmapmail] Should resourceData have a MIME type?

[Thomas B. Passin]

[Nikita Ogievetsky]>
> Thinking about this issue again I must say that neither occurrence type,
nor
> scope, nor variant (which is not there yet) are the proper syntactical
> places
> for expressing resourceData MIME type.
> I am saying this because all off the above allow expressing properties of
> occurrence assertion. And MIME type is the property of the resource
itself,
> not occurrence!

Exactly my point!  I am talking about using it **only** for resourceData,
not for resourceRef.  The addressable resources should (theoretically) come
with their own types.  With HTTP, there should be a MIME type header.  With
FTP, everyone is used to guessing and there are algorithms for doing so.
But the resourceData is not coming from some resource, it is just characters
in the occurrence.  That is why it makes all kinds of sense to add a MIME
type to resourceData, which it would have if it came from (for example) from
a web server as a resourceRef instead of from the topic map as
resoureceData.

As for resourceRef, I agree, the type of representation of the resource is
up to the server and might change from time to time.  Therefore applying a
media type indicator would not make sense for a resourceRef.

Cheers,

Tom P