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:

• MoinMoin seems to have code for (and discussion of):
  • text/x.moin.wiki
  • text/wiki
  • text/moin-wiki
  • text/x.moin.creole
• SocialTextcurrently uses
  • text/x.socialtext-wiki https://www.socialtext.net/st-rest-docs/text_x_socialtext_wiki but intends to move to
  • text/vnd.socialtext.wiki https://www.socialtext.net/st-rest-docs/text_vnd_socialtext_wiki
• A quick IRC survey on #mediawiki revealed little, except that developers there thought they were using text/x-wiki (or ought to be). Then TimStarling chimed in saying that getting text/wiki officially registered with IANA was impossible, so everybody should be using text/vnd.foo.wiki
• A quick IRC survey on #xwiki revealed little, except that text/wiki+xwiki seemed plausible
• TikiWiki's (apparently stalled) IETF RFC wanted to define a syntax which would use text/wiki
• Markdown discussion:
  • text/x-markdown
  • text/vnd.daringfireball.markdown
  • this message mentions that IANA has an online form which supposedly makes text/vnd.vendor.foo registrations a lot easier than text/foo, but is still non-trivial.
  • this message reminds us that the purpose of a type/subtype string is to avoid two different communities sharing the same media type for different content; and also questions whether a text/vnd.vendor.foo registration is at all of any more value than an text/x-foo experimental type, other than 'IANA-compliant smugness'.
• CPAN-API
  • text/x-pod
  • text/x-markdown
• JSPWiki mentions
  • text/x-wiki.jspwiki
  • text/x-wiki.creole
• TRAC hacks mentions in their WikiCreoleRendererPlugin
  • text/x-wiki.creole

Ancient (stalled, inconclusive) discussions on this problem:

• http://osdir.com/ml/java.com4j.user/2006-03/msg00004.html
• http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-types/current/msg00200.html

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