Markdown Media Type Registration

[Aaron Swartz]

> What's the difference between 'VND' and 'PRS'?

 The vendor tree is used for media types associated with commercially 
available products. "Vendor" or "producer" are construed as 
equivalent and very broadly in this context.

 Registrations for media types created experimentally or as part of 
products that are not distributed commercially may be registered in 
the personal or vanity tree. The registrations are distinguished by 
the leading facet "prs.".

 - http://www.mhonarc.org/~ehood/MIME/2048/rfc2048.html#2.1.2 (the spec)

> I'm curious as to why and when this would be used in the context of
> Atom. For the publishing API?

I would presume so; it seems like a useful standardized way to
communicate to various weblog publishers and editors that "this post
is in X format" so they know how to convert it to HTML on their end.

> Would I use it instead of "text/plain" to serve up my
> Markdown-formatted plaintext web archives. E.g.:
> 
>   <http://daringfireball.net/2004/11/audion_story.text>

Yep. Since it's a subtype of text, browsers should display it as a
text file just the same.