blog/data/2019-05-20-sosi-mime-type.txt

   1 Title: MIME type "text/vnd.sosi" for SOSI map data
   2 Tags: english, kart, standard, noark5
   3 Date: 2019-05-20 08:35
   4
   5 <p>As part of my involvement in the work to
   6 <a href="https://github.com/arkivverket/noark5-tjenestegrensesnitt-standard">standardise
   7 a REST based API for Noark 5</a>, the Norwegian archiving standard, I
   8 spent some time the last few months to try to register a
   9 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/">MIME type</a>
  10 and <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/">PRONOM
  11 code</a> for the SOSI file format.  The background is that there is a
  12 set of formats approved for long term storage and archiving in Norway,
  13 and among these formats, SOSI is the only format missing a MIME type
  14 and PRONOM code.</p>
  15
  16 <p>What is SOSI, you might ask?  To quote Wikipedia: SOSI is short for
  17 Samordnet Opplegg for Stedfestet Informasjon (literally "Coordinated
  18 Approach for Spatial Information", but more commonly expanded in
  19 English to Systematic Organization of Spatial Information).  It is a
  20 text based file format for geo-spatial vector information used in
  21 Norway.  Information about the SOSI format can be found in English
  22 from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSI">Wikipedia</a>.  The
  23 specification is available in Norwegian from
  24 <a href="https://www.kartverket.no/geodataarbeid/Standarder/SOSI/">the
  25 Norwegian mapping authority</a>.  The SOSI standard, which originated
  26 in the beginning of nineteen eighties, was the inspiration and formed the
  27 basis for the XML based
  28 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_Markup_Language">Geography
  29 Markup Language</a>.</p>
  30
  31 <p>I have so far written
  32 <a href="https://github.com/file/file/pull/67">a pattern matching
  33 rule</a> for the file(1) unix tool to recognize SOSI files, submitted
  34 a request to the PRONOM project to have a PRONOM ID assigned to the
  35 format (reference TNA1555078202S60), and today send a request to IANA
  36 to register the "text/vnd.sosi" MIME type for this format (referanse
  37 <a href="https://tools.iana.org/public-view/viewticket/1143144">IANA
  38 #1143144</a>).  If all goes well, in a few months, anyone implementing
  39 the Noark 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt API spesification should be able to
  40 use an official MIME type and PRONOM code for SOSI files.  In
  41 addition, anyone using SOSI files on Linux should be able to
  42 automatically recognise the format and web sites handing out SOSI
  43 files can begin providing a more specific MIME type.  So far, SOSI
  44 files has been handed out from web sites using the
  45 "application/octet-stream" MIME type, which is just a nice way of
  46 stating "I do not know".  Soon, we will know. :)</p>
  47
  48 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  49 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  50 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>