[media-types] Re: +md as a text/markdown suffix

So, looking at the structured syntax suffix (what a mouthful) registry:
  https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-type-structured-suffix

... I think it's true that every registered suffix (sss?) can satisfy the test that any type registered with that suffix has a concrete syntax that all instances (no matter their full subtype) share; the subtype only adds semantics and perhaps structure to that suffix, it doesn't violate the basic parsing model.

Registering markdown as a suffix seems to invert that -- it says "here's a family of formats that share semantics, but they're spelled differently on the wire." That's assuming that you want to accommodate all of the various flavours and complications of modern markdown, and not choose a winner.

I don't see anything in <https://ietf-wg-mediaman.github.io/6838bis/draft-ietf-mediaman-6838bis.html#name-structured-syntax-suffixes> that outright prohibits this (although the use cases section very clearly doesn't contemplate it), but I do wonder whether it's a good idea.

I also wonder if we need more guidance in 6838bis, one way or another.

Cheers,


> On 20 Aug 2026, at 10:51 pm, Darrel Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I would like to solicit feedback on the possibility of registering +md as a structured suffix for media types that are markdown documents with additional machine processable semantics, such as YAML frontmatter.  This request is specifically triggered by work on https://ai-catalog.io/ to provide discoverability of things like Agent Skills https://agentskills.io/home 
> 
> I have also recently seen media type registrations where we have had requests to register media types in the text tree that contain machine readable semantics specifically because they wanted fallback to human readable content in places like GitHub.
> 
> By having a +md suffix, media types can be registered with a clear identification of the semantics carried by the document, but the +md would indicate that rendering as plain text would also be valuable to some consumers when the specific media type is not understood by the client.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Darrel
> 
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Mark Nottingham   https://mnot.net/

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