Subject: [apps-discuss] Fwd: Request for input: text/markdown media type

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 22:20:50 -0700

Colleagues,

As discussed, it's important to us that the text/markdown work not take
place in a vacuum. Thus, in coordination with our supervising Area Director
and with Sean, I have sent the following informal liaison statement to
several participants in the Markdown community as well as one of their main
mailing lists.

If there are other participants in that community that didn't receive the
statement and should have, or other mailing lists to which we should reach
out, please let me know and I'll forward it there as well.

-MSK, APPSAWG co-chair

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Murray S. Kucherawy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 10:17 PM
Subject: Request for input: text/markdown media type

From: IETF Applications Area Working Group (APPSAWG)

Response Contact: [email-masked]

Technical Contact: [email-masked]
    [email-masked]

Purpose: Request for input

Attachments: (none)

Body:

The Applications Area Working Group (APPSAWG) of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) has taken up a proposed work item to register a new Media
Type, "text/markdown", for the purposes of identifying content in the
Markdown format.  The current version of the document can be viewed here:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-appsawg-text-markdown/

We know Sean Leonard approached the Markdown community about starting this
work previously (see
http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2014-July/thread.html)
and some of the questions that were discussed in that thread are also being
asked in the working group.  In the interests of ensuring that any choices
we make will not conflict with the positions and course of the Markdown
community, APPSAWG would like to solicit feedback on a few important
questions.

Part of the impetus here is that an unregistered and unspecified media type
“text/x-markdown” appears to be in use.  This work seeks to formalize this
use and register the name.

Our questions for the Markdown community:

(1) We understand there is not a standard Markdown format, but rather a
number of variants based on one original proposal.  This leads us to wonder
how a consumer would be expected to interpret this media type once it is
registered.  Typically, a media type registration includes a reference to a
single, stable, definition document, but we are not aware of such a thing
for Markdown.  Can or should this work proceed without one?

Note that the IETF has no intention to undertake the work of publishing an
RFC that contains a Markdown syntax or otherwise blessing any particular
Markdown variant, or calling one of them “standard".  Any Markdown
definition document(s) would be referenced by this work and would be
external to the IETF.

(2) One proposal to address this issue is to include a parameter that
indicates which flavor of Markdown should be applied in order to translate
the input when the media type is encountered.  For example:

Content-Type: text/markdown; flavor="foobar"

This would likely necessitate a registry of known variants and their
respective defining documents so that a consumer has implementation
guidance.  This puts some burden on the Markdown community to begin
formally documenting and registering all of its variants that might use
this media type.

(3) The solution in (2) above further raises the question of whether there
should be a default variant (i.e., what to do if no “flavor” clause is
present), and if so, which one should be the default.  If there is no
default, then how should a consumer interpret the absence of the “flavor"
tag?

(4) At the same time, it has been observed that regardless of which variant
is in use as input, any Markdown processor will generally produce something
useful as output.  Given this, is it necessary to know the “flavor” in use
at all?  Put another way: Rather than being concerned with variants, should
"text/markdown" merely be a hint to consumers that the content is in some
Markdown variant, and beyond that, caveat implementer?

(5) Does the Markdown community have any alternative suggestions in
response to any of these questions?

We look forward to your replies, hopefully within the next several weeks,
which can be sent to the response and technical contacts listed in the
header of this liaison.  Markdown community participants are also invited
to subscribe and reply to [email-masked] in order to address the
entire working group directly.

M. Kucherawy
for the Applications Area Working Group, IETF