MIME type for diffs, *any* MIME type
Julian Reschke
julian.reschke at gmx.de
Wed Jun 27 14:58:27 CEST 2007
Lisa Dusseault wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This has come up before and stalled the whole attempt to standardize a
> PATCH method for HTTP: the lack of a properly registered MIME type for
> any binary or text diff format.
>
> The GDiff format described in http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-gdiff-19970901
> states the MIME type but it was never registered. The IPR situation is
> completely unclear. No author of this has ever responded to my pings.
>
> The VCDIFF format is described in http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3284.html
> does not choose a MIME type. The IPR disclosure
> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/ipr_detail_show.cgi?ipr_id=40>
> states that AT&T grants licenses to "transmit data over the Internet
> under HTTP 1.1". I do not want to start to interpret whether that
> covers new HTTP 1.1 methods as well as the ones that existed when this
> grant was made. An AT&T guy responded to my emails and said he'd
> suggest a more liberal license to the lawyers but we never saw anything
> come of that.
>
> Julian recently mentioned the POSIX 'diff' format which is most widely
> used and probably under the most liberal license due to existing source
> code licenses. No official MIME type was ever suggested for this until
> Julian's mail but a bit of googling suggests that some applications
> informally use application/diff and this is probably what is meant by
> that. I am unaware of an existing formal spec for this -- and that's
> the sticking point for registering this one -- although clearly
> interoperability is common.
>
> Can we just ask IANA to register any or all of these, perhaps with
> appropriate disclaimers in the form about IPR or specification
> formality? Surely that would be better than the status quo. Can I help
> cut red tape here?
I would propose the following:
- Write an RFC registering a media type (or media types) for the various
output formats of POSIX diff (see previous thread over here).
- Define a *very* simply binary patch format, without looking at GDIFF
or VCDIFF. I'm ready to work on that.
Best regards, Julian
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