Media type for output of POSIX "diff" utility

[Simon Josefsson]

Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at gmx.de> writes:

> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> This sounds like a good idea to me.  Gnus has used text/x-patch for a
>> long time for this purpose.  I suspect this has been influenced from
>> older tools, and Gnus usage has possibly also influenced more recent
>> tools.
>
> So would you suggest to stick with "text/x-diff", and just register
> that, or would you prefer "text/diff"?

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

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.

>>> - 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.

/Simon