Media type for output of POSIX "diff" utility

Julian Reschke julian.reschke at gmx.de
Thu May 31 17:02:49 CEST 2007


Simon Josefsson wrote:
> I don't think you can register text/x-diff, can you?  x-* is reserved
> for non-standard media types.

I guess an exception could be made if this would just document 
widespread practice (if we wanted that).

> I think we should standardize either text/diff or text/patch.  Even
> though the name 'diff' denotes the tool, 'patch' may be somewhat more
> descriptive, and there is existing deployment of text/x-patch.  I'm not
> sure which to prefer.

Good point. "text/patch" makes more sense.

>>>> - Would it make sense to define individual types for the different
>>>> diff output formats (simple, context, ...), or would that be something
>>>> for a type parameter?
>>> I don't believe that doing either (i.e., neither type parameter nor
>>> multiple media types) will serve the goal of interoperability well.
>> In which case we'll have to explicitly list which flavors of diff
>> outputs the media type includes...
> 
> Yes.

Best regards, Julian



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