RFC 7763 - The text/markdown Media Type

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

The text/markdown Media Type

Abstract

This document registers the text/markdown media type for use with<br>Markdown, a family of plain-text formatting syntaxes that optionally<br>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<br>published for informational purposes.

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

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

Copyright Notice

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

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

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

Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2<br>1.1. This Is Markdown! Or: Markup and Its Discontents . . . . . 2<br>1.2. Markdown Is About Writing and Editing . . . . . . . . . . . 3<br>1.3. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5<br>2. Markdown Media Type Registration Application . . . . . . . . . 5<br>3. Fragment Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8<br>3.1. Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8<br>4. Content Disposition and preview-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9<br>5. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9<br>6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10<br>6.1. Markdown Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10<br>7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13<br>8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13<br>8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13<br>8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14<br>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<br>continuum of techniques. On the one end is plain text: computer-<br>encoded text that consists only of a sequence of code points from a<br>given standard, with no other formatting or structural information<br>[UNICODE]. (On the other end is binary data, which computer systems<br>store and process with bit-for-bit accuracy.) Many of these standards<br>include control characters that are used as in-band signaling to<br>cause effects other than the addition of a symbol (or grapheme) to<br>the text.

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

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

In contrast to formal markup languages, lightweight markup languages<br>use simple syntaxes; they are designed to be easy for humans to enter<br>and understand with basic text editors. Markdown, the subject of<br>this document, began as an /informal/ plain-text formatting syntax<br>[MDSYNTAX] and Perl script HTML/XHTML processor [MARKDOWN] targeted<br>at non-technical users using unspecialized tools, such as plain-text<br>email clients. [MDSYNTAX] explicitly rejects the notion of validity:<br>there is no such...