Media type for output of POSIX "diff" utility

[Martin Duerst]

At 00:49 07/06/01, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi at gmx.net> writes:
>
>> * Julian Reschke wrote:
>>>Well, I18N would be part of the media type registration (as far as I 
>>>know, diff files do not carry character set information, so the only way 
>>>to specify it would be through the charset parameter).
>>
>> I am not sure it would be wise to attempt that. The diff files do not
>> typically say which encoding they use, and they might not use a single
>> encoding at all (if you switch from one encoding to the other and sub-
>> mit a diff to a mailing list, if you have a patch file making changes
>> to multiple files in different encodings), it's not likely that there
>> will be any encoding specified at all. It might then be better to use
>> it as text-like binary type.

This would suggests that application/diff or application/patch
would be more appropriate.

>It seems to me that text files in general have some of these concerns
>too, and that the concerns apply to text/plain as well.

"Text files in general" may have such concerns, because
"text file in general" is not defined anywhere.
On the other hand, text/plain is very well defined, and it is clear
that it means text in a single 'charset'.

Regards,    Martin.



#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp