Current Description Tools

Why Do We Need More?

Internal Tools The XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML recommendations provide tools that developers can use to identify document structures today.
External Tools The two primary methods of labeling document types in use today are MIME content types (and their affiliated labels) and file extensions.
'Trust but Verify' At present, all of these tools have holes in them. While developers can work around the problems, they add an extra level of description to any specification that relies on them.