+
As part of my involvement in the work to
+standardise
+a REST based API for Noark 5, the Norwegian archiving standard, I
+spent some time the last few months to try to register a
+MIME type
+and PRONOM
+code for the SOSI file format. The background is that there is a
+set of formats approved for long term storage and archiving in Norway,
+and among these formats, SOSI is the only format missing a MIME type
+and PRONOM code.
+
+
What is SOSI, you might ask? To quote Wikipedia: SOSI is short for
+Samordnet Opplegg for Stedfestet Informasjon (literally "Coordinated
+Approach for Spatial Information", but more commonly expanded in
+English to Systematic Organization of Spatial Information). It is a
+text based file format for geo-spatial vector information used in
+Norway. Information about the SOSI format can be found in English
+from Wikipedia. The
+specification is available in Norwegian from
+the
+Norwegian mapping authority. The SOSI standard, which originated
+in the beginning of nineteen eighties, was the inspiration and formed the
+basis for the XML based
+Geography
+Markup Language.
+
+
I have so far written
+a pattern matching
+rule for the file(1) unix tool to recognize SOSI files, submitted
+a request to the PRONOM project to have a PRONOM ID assigned to the
+format (reference TNA1555078202S60), and today send a request to IANA
+to register the "text/vnd.sosi" MIME type for this format (referanse
+IANA
+#1143144). If all goes well, in a few months, anyone implementing
+the Noark 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt API spesification should be able to
+use an official MIME type and PRONOM code for SOSI files. In
+addition, anyone using SOSI files on Linux should be able to
+automatically recognise the format and web sites handing out SOSI
+files can begin providing a more specific MIME type. So far, SOSI
+files has been handed out from web sites using the
+"application/octet-stream" MIME type, which is just a nice way of
+stating "I do not know". Soon, we will know. :)
+
+
As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
+
+