Brainstorming Media Types for T/Foswiki TML WikiText

Motivation

Having a media-type for Foswiki TML markup is useful:
  • ... if we wanted to allow HTTP Content-negotiating for the un-(HTML)-rendered TML version of a page. An HTTP client simply sets an Accept: text/x-foswiki header
  • ... so we can treat Foswiki TML the same way as any other MIME-typeable content, Eg:
    • "Typed topics" so we could store things other than TML in them: %TOPICINFO{contenttype="text/x-foswiki"}% vs %TOPICINFO{contenttype="image/svg+xml"}%
    • Return an Content-Type: text/x-foswiki header if returning a purely TML response
    • Foswiki::Render might one day care about (and know how to render) multiple media types, of which Foswiki's TML should be one.

Documentation

text/wiki isn't officially an IANA registered MIME/Media Type type. Indeed, stuff that requires lots of processing to really understand properly (some Foswiki pages do look like line noise!) should probably be in application/* rather than text/*.

So, RFC:4288 outlines how media types should work.

Proposal:
Content MIME-Type
WikiSyntax text/x-foswiki
WikiSyntax + Un-expanded %MACROs application/x-foswiki

Alternatives:
  • text/x-wiki.tml, text/x-wiki.tml+foswiki, text/x-wiki.tml+twiki
  • text/vnd.foswiki.tml registered with IANA, or
  • text/x-tml+foswiki
  • text/x-wiki+foswiki
  • text/x-wiki+tml; variant=foswiki vs text/x-wiki+tml; variant=twiki

What MIME types are other wikis using? What should Foswiki use?

Other wikis/markups: Ancient (stalled, inconclusive) discussions on this problem:

Discussion

Added markdown notes, re-arranged preference for text/x-foswiki

See also: this post telling us to give up on creating yet-another-obscure-media-type.

Well, maybe not us specifically, but the so-called 'RESTful' crowd anyway.

As for the RESTful crowd: http://www.innoq.com/blog/stilkov/2011/12/media-types/

-- PaulHarvey - 01 Feb 2012

Macro-expanded TML is a superset of HTML, so an Accept header of text/html,text/x-foswiki makes perfect sense and avoids conflict with (tm)wiki. Logically application/x-foswiki also makes sense. Whether the x- prefix or vnd prefix applies seems to me to be a bit random.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 01 Feb 2012

I think you're supposed to register vnd.* properly, and that's supposed to be rather easy, but perhaps "easy" is relative to getting a new subtype registered (which is almost less painful than having your teeth extracted, but not quite)

-- PaulHarvey - 02 Feb 2012

BasicForm edit

TopicClassification BrainStorming
TopicSummary What MIME types are other wikis using? What should Foswiki use?
InterestedParties PaulHarvey
Topic revision: r5 - 02 Feb 2012, PaulHarvey
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