[webkit-dev] Accept Header and application/xml

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

(looks like I only sent this reply directly, re-sending to the list)

On 07.01.2010, at 7:53, Tobias Tom wrote:

> My real-life problem here is the following: A resource is available  
> inside an (machine-optmized) XML format and in (human optimized)  
> HTML format under the same URL. Webkit will always get the XML  
> version. Is there any reason for that?


Historically, this is a result of mimicking what Firefox did at some  
point. They don't do that any more, so I think that WebKit should  
prefer text/html, too. As of version 3.5, Firefox sends (for main  
resources):

Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8

<https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27267> tracks this problem.

> I can understand the fact that xhtml should be preferred before  
> html, but Webkit itself is not able to render application/xml in a  
> human format anyway (no offense here, I think that's really ok).

Actually, WebKit can render plain XML if it has an appropriate XSL  
stylesheet (e.g. one that converts it to HTML, or to SVG). Also, XHTML  
or SVG can be sent as application/xml. But anyway, we should probably  
just mimic Firefox again.

- WBR, Alexey Proskuryakov