The text/markdown Media Type
RFC 7763

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                        S. Leonard
Request for Comments: 7763                                 Penango, Inc.
Category: Informational                                       March 2016
ISSN: 2070-1721

                      The text/markdown Media Type

Abstract

   This document registers the text/markdown media type for use with
   Markdown, a family of plain-text formatting syntaxes that optionally
   can be converted to formal markup languages such as HTML.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
   approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7763.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Leonard                       Informational                     [Page 1]
RFC 7763              The text/markdown Media Type            March 2016

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
     1.1. This Is Markdown! Or: Markup and Its Discontents  . . . . .  2
     1.2. Markdown Is About Writing and Editing . . . . . . . . . . .  3
     1.3. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   2. Markdown Media Type Registration Application  . . . . . . . . .  5
   3. Fragment Identifiers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     3.1. Parameters  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   4.  Content Disposition and preview-type . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   5.  Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   6.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     6.1. Markdown Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   8. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     8.1. Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     8.2. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.  Introduction

1.1.  This Is Markdown! Or: Markup and Its Discontents

   In computer systems, textual data is stored and processed using a
   continuum of techniques.  On the one end is plain text: computer-
   encoded text that consists only of a sequence of code points from a
   given standard, with no other formatting or structural information
   [UNICODE].  (On the other end is binary data, which computer systems
   store and process with bit-for-bit accuracy.) Many of these standards
   include control characters that are used as in-band signaling to
   cause effects other than the addition of a symbol (or grapheme) to
   the text.

   Markup offers an alternative means to encode this signaling
   information by overloading certain graphic characters (see, e.g.,
   [ISO646]) with additional meanings.  Therefore, markup languages
   allow for annotating a document in a syntactically distinguishable
   way from the text, while keeping the annotations printable.  Markup
   languages are (reasonably) well-specified and tend to follow (mostly)
   standardized syntax rules.  Examples of formal markup languages
   include Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), HTML, XML, and
   LaTeX.  Standardized rules lead to interoperability between markup
   processors, but they impose skill requirements on new users that lead
   to markup languages becoming less accessible to beginners.  These
   rules also reify "validity": content that does not conform to the
   rules is treated differently (i.e., is rejected) than content that
   conforms.

Leonard                       Informational                     [Page 2]
RFC 7763              The text/markdown Media Type            March 2016

   In contrast to formal markup languages, lightweight markup languages