Re: [Fwd: Re: I-D for the PATCH method]

On Aug 15, 2006, at 4:01 PM, Suma Potluri wrote:

>
>> OK, there are two ways to approach that:
>>
>> 1) either make sure that each of the patch formats indeed has it's  
>> own
>> MIME type,
>>
>> 2) use generic types, and have an additional request header  
>> specify the
>> type of operation.
>>
>>  From a spec writing point of view, 1) seems to be preferable to  
>> me. If
>> you choose 2), you will essentially have to invent a new registry for
>> types (IANA??), and have to maintain specifications for these types
>> (which can be just pointers to existing specs). It's not entirely  
>> clear
>> to me how this is better than registering MIME types for these  
>> formats.
>>
>
> Since using the content-type header for the patch format seems to  
> be the
> preferable in general, we could update the draft accordingly. The  
> required
> patch format text/normal-diff could be the used for text files and  
> another
> (optional??) patch format application/gdiff could be used for all
> resources. The normal-diff format for text files seems to be  
> preferable
> over the gdiff format because it is a widely used diff format and  
> could be
> easily generated by the clients using the existing tools. We can  
> include
> the MIME type registration information in the draft for text/normal- 
> diff
> and application/gdiff patch formats.

Do you have a proper reference for the normal-diff format?  Are you  
legally allowed to document it yourself in an Internet-Draft?  If  
not, it might be difficult in practice to register a MIME type for  
the normal-diff algorithm.  Part of the IETF's attempt to generally  
protect software developers from the position of having to implement  
a standard requiring technology they're not allowed to use.

Lisa