Re: Media types for RDF.

Dave Beckett wrote:
> There's no process for W3C to do track this as far as I see and the process
> from the IETF side is rather opaque to me, apart from email the ietf-types
> list for advice/feedback, which does not seem to be authoritative.

Assuming there's not too much resistance, what it really needs is someone to do 
the legwork to drive it forward.  IIRC, new MIME types like application/N3, or 
whatever, need to be IETF standards-track or similar (see below).

[[
3.1.  Standards Tree

    The standards tree is intended for types of general interest to the
    Internet community.  Registrations in the standards tree MUST be
    approved by the IESG and MUST correspond to a formal publication by a
    recognized standards body.  In the case of registration for the IETF
    itself, the registration proposal MUST be published as an RFC.
    Standards-tree registration RFCs can either be standalone
    "registration only" RFCs, or they can be incorporated into a more
    general specification of some sort.
]]
-- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4288.txt
(this is the definitive process document, cited by IANA at 
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/)

If the media type specification is an a W3C REC-track document, then submission 
of the registration template should see it through the system.  Otherwise, 
probably the easiest way forward is a personal-submission IETF standard-track RFC:
  1. Create an internet-draft in the appropriate form.  Address the required 
points from RFC 4288 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4288.txt).
  2. Submit for review.  Also it's probably a good idea at this point to notify 
an IETF application area director of your intention.
  3. After the discussion has died down, and the consensus is reflected in the 
document, contact the IESG to request a last call for standards-track.  For 
personal submissions, assuming the material is not so contentious or complex to 
require a full working group process, the main difference from a WG submission 
is imposition of a longer last call period.

See also http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2026.txt, esp. 6.1, which covers the IETF 
standards process and individual submissions.

IIRC, one of the discussion points last time round was whether to use 
application/... or text/... (I believe I weighed in for application/... types, 
based on distant past IETF discussions - but maybe the wind has changed now? 
The person to ask, I think, would be Ned Freed)

#g

Received on Friday, 21 August 2009 16:40:14 UTC