A document describing the handling of XML Media Types -- first reported in xmlhack in a September 1999 story -- has been, as another xmlhack story describes it, "painstakingly steered through the narrow waters between the IETF and W3C," to official release by the Internet Engineering Task Force as a new Request for Comments, RFC 3023.

Now available in all online RFC libraries, RFC 3023 -- coauthored by MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given), xmlhack contributing editor Simon St.Laurent, and Dan Kohn -- describes a set of content-type identifiers for facilitating exchange of XML content over the Internet:

• text/xml
• application/xml
• text/xml-external-parsed-entity
• application/xml-external-parsed-entity
• application/xml-dtd

The document also describes the +xml extension suffix, which developers can use to identify new XML-based formats they create.

RFC 3023 joins a list of more than 3000 Internet-related RFCs that have been published by the IETF, dating back to 1969. For a concise, insightful description of RFCs in general (and contrasted with other standards efforts), read the RFC entry from FOLDOC.

Related stories:

• XML MIME Types, Blocks, and more
• Content negotiation draft moving toward Proposed Standard
• New IETF XML Media Types draft released
• New release of XML media types Internet Draft
• Fragment identifier controversies
• Internet draft proposes new media types for XML