Re: [Json] Regarding JSON text sequence ambiguities (Re: serializing sequences of JSON values)

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 4:39 PM, Larry Masinter <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> Arguably JSON text sequences are a new format,
>
> yes

It seems we're getting consensus on that much.

>> deserving of its own MIME type and so on.
>
> no, not all formats need MIME types. There are infinitely many formats.
> MIME is one way of noting a file format and distinguishing it from others, but most applications don't NEED to name the types they accept and in general, they can't.

The same argument leads to not needing application/json either.  And
yet there it is.

For HTTP applications an application/json-text-sequence type might
mean that a server could generate N objects one at a time instead of
generating them all into a top-level array then sending that once
built.  Sure, it's not hard to build a top-level array in an online
manner, but if you've ever run into an application that doesn't, you
know that there is value in this.

> I think to justify a new MIME type, you need to provide a concrete use case that would actually use it and need it.  In most of the content-negotiation scenarios, MIME types are far too course-grained to express content-features.

A proprietary app I work could use this.  It's a database, queries
return results, as expected, specifically as a top-level array or
results -- each result being roughly like a SQL row.  Actually, it's
an app built out of Rails and Postgresql, of which there are many out
there.  Who knows, it might be trivial to deploy this new format type.

Nico
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