I'm writing some (desktop-) programs to deal with ANSI graphics[1] and related formats. And now I find my self in the need of mime-types for these file formats. I've search and asked around a bit but didn't find anything. So I present a brief description of the (five more important) formats and my suggestions on mime-types. Does anybody have some opinion or even information about this?
The word ANSI is short for American National Standards Institute and refers to the standard ANSI X3.64. But the graphics depend on a specific (not entirely correct) implementation: ansi.sys found on DOS system. And also on some specific characteristics of the VGA graph adapter (like most of the other formats too). Extension : ans Suggested Mime-type : text/x-ansi Avatar[2] is a similar encoding. But the codes are binary making the files smaller. Strictly speaking it only first level of Avatar (Avatar/0) which is encoded in the files in question (the next level has codes for moving windows around and things like that). Extension : avt Suggested mime-type : text/x-avatar Another common format is bin. It is basically a binary dumb of the VGA adapters text mode memory (0xb800:0), but larger so it can be scrolled over the screen. This is a very stupid format since it has no header and just a very general file extension. I bet there is a bunch of other stuff named bin too. Extension : bin Suggested mime-type : image/x-bin To solve the shortcomings of the bin format, xbin[3] was invented. In addition to the binary dumb it contains a header, and optionally an alternative font and a palette. Extension : xb Suggested mime-type : image/x-xbin Remote Imaging Protocol[4] (or RIPscrip) is a set of codes, not unlike the ANSI ones, but also supports some graphic primitives (polygons ans such). As a protocol it used to add some graphics to the text displayed in a terminal. But the file format is in reality used for storing graphics (even thou it could be used to store text with just a few layout features). So I'm not sure if it should be considered a text or an image format, but I lean toward an image format. Extension : rip Suggested mime-type : image/x-ripscrip [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_art [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVATAR [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBIN [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_imaging_protocol _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
