Markdown MIME type?

[Thomas Nichols]

John Gruber wrote on 2008/02/06 22:48:

> On Feb 3, 2008, at 2:46 PM, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:

>

>> Regrettably, there still isn’t one registered for Markdown. If my

>> reading of [RFC 4288] is correct, John shouldn’t have any trouble

>> registering eg. `text/vnd.daringfireball.markdown` using the

>> application form at <http://www.iana.org/cgi-bin/mediatypes.pl>.

>> (Most of the “mandatory” fields in that form apply only to MIME

>> types registered in the standards tree, not the vendor tree.)

>

> I'm willing to do this, but I don't think I'm familiar enough with the 

> associated RFCs to fill out the form accurately.

>

> Here's the thing, though: (a) To my eyes, "text/x-markdown" looks a 

> lot better than "text/vnd.daringfireball.markdown"; and (b) I don't 

> have to do a damn thing for "text/x-markdown".

>

> What exactly would be the practical benefits over just using 

> "text/x-markdown"?

>

> -J.G.

>

 From <ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2045.txt> :

----

Beyond this syntax, the only syntactic constraint on the definition
   of subtype names is the desire that their uses must not conflict.
   That is, it would be undesirable to have two different communities
   using "Content-Type: application/foobar" to mean two different
   things.  The process of defining new media subtypes, then, is not
   intended to be a mechanism for imposing restrictions, but simply a
   mechanism for publicizing their definition and usage.  There are,
   therefore, two acceptable mechanisms for defining new media subtypes:

    (1)   Private values (starting with "X-") may be defined
          bilaterally between two cooperating agents without
          outside registration or standardization. Such values
          cannot be registered or standardized.

    (2)   New standard values should be registered with IANA as
          described in RFC 2048.

----

 From the wording "Such values cannot be registered or standardized" I'm 
guessing that submission to Opera / Mozilla for inclusion as a standard 
mime type will be fruitless with an unregistered x-token. It might have 
a greater chance if the appropriate RFC-2048 hoops have been jumped 
through to register 'text/markdown' -- but I have absolutely no data to 
support this whatever, I'd love to be proven wrong.

Looking, for example, at the mime-types supported natively by [Mozilla 
on Windows][] it seems there are no 'text/x-foo' or 'text/vnd.foo.bar' 
types, though there are plenty of 'application/x-foo' types.

[Mozilla on Windows]: http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/winmime.html

Of course, this argument is moot if there's no interest in having 
browsers handle markdown intelligently. And if 'text/markdown' seems too 
painful an option, I'm not sure what 'text/vnd.daringfireball.markdown' 
wins you over 'text/x-markdown' other than a certain comfortable 
IANA-compliant smugness.

-- Thomas.