- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 18:06:12 -0400
- To: www-tag@w3.org
Last week I circulated a preliminary draft [1] of a TAG email on use of unregistered media types in W3C Recommendations. Based on responses to that, as well as input on today's telcon from members who were not present for last week's discussion, I am offering this revised draft. There is still no specific plan to turn this note into a TAG finding, but we note Mark Baker's suggestion [2] that some of this guidance might fit well into a future revision of Tag finding "Internet Media Type registration, consistency of use" [3] . As with the first draft, the following is NOT the agreed position of the TAG, just text that's being circulated for consideration. =======START OF DRAFT NOTE========== Members of the W3C Advisory Board have recently approached the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) to ask for clarification of the guidelines regarding references to unregistered media types from W3C Recommendations. The TAG briefly considered this question during their teleconference of 18 July 2006 [1,2], and again on 25 July [minutes not yet available]. This note is being circulated to publicize our conclusions. Media types and other formats referenced from W3C Recommendations should be properly registered with the appropriate authority. Nonetheless, the TAG recognizes that certain such formats come into widespread use without registration, and that there may thus in exceptional circumstances be reasons for considering reference to unregistered types in W3C Recommendations. To emphasize that the importance attached to registration, the TAG suggests the following guidelines for W3C Recommendations: * Workgroups preparing Recommendations should avoid dependencies on media types or other data formats that are not properly registered with the appropriate registration authority. In the case of MIME media types, that authority is IANA. * Accordingly, workgroups should arrange for registration of new media types that they may create, and should make reasonable efforts to promote the proper registration of other formats on which their Recommendations depend. The TAG does recognize that there are a few unregistered media types already in widespread use, and we agree that there may be exceptional cases when Recommendations would benefit from reference to such types. We believe that the W3C process should recognize that there is great value to encouraging W3C groups to promote the registration of such types, but should also recognize that asking a workgroup to do this as a precondition for referencing a type could in some cases be burdensome. In short, registration is important and requiring registration should be the norm; very occasional exceptions might be allowed in cases where arranging for registration of the referenced types is deemed unusually difficult. We suggest that the W3C Advisory Board is the appropriate group to propose specific changes to the W3C Process that would capture these principles. The goal should be to ensure that workgroups are suitably attentive to the requirements for registering media types, and also that the appropriate tradeoffs are considered when a need is seen for reference to as yet unregistered types. Noah Mendelsohn For the W3C Technical Architecture Group [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2006/07/18-agenda.html [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2006/07/18-tagmem-minutes.html#item05 =======END OF DRAFT NOTE========== [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2006Jul/0027.html [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2006Jul/0028.html [3] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2004/0430-mime -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2006Jul/0027.html -------------------------------------- Noah Mendelsohn IBM Corporation One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 1-617-693-4036 --------------------------------------
Received on Tuesday, 25 July 2006 22:06:26 UTC