Re: TAG Position on Use of Unregistered Media Types in W3C Recommendations

For reference, here is the current document that describes how WGs
are to register media types:
 http://www.w3.org/2002/06/registering-mediatype

 _ Ian

On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 19:50 -0400, noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote:
> 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 
> following are 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, the TAG recommends that Working Groups register any new 
> media type intended for use within W3C Recommendation-track documents with 
> IANA. Further, we suggest that if pre-existing types are being 
> grand-fathered into a Recommendation-track document, then the Working 
> Group should clearly document the status of IANA registration efforts for 
> the aforementioned types at each stage of the process of moving from 
> working draft to Recommendation.
> 
> As the TAG is not chartered to address process questions, we suggest that 
> the Advisory Board consider the most appropriate means of adapting W3C 
> processes to achieve the above goals.  Thank you for your consideration of 
> these suggestions.
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------
> Noah Mendelsohn 
> IBM Corporation
> One Rogers Street
> Cambridge, MA 02142
> 1-617-693-4036
> --------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> 
-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447