parameter quoting - LC comment on draft-nottingham-http-link-header-07.txt

[Julian Reschke <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

a few comments regarding quoting of link parameters:

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-http-link-header-07#section-5> 
defines the new parameters:

                      | ( "hreflang" "=" Language-Tag )
                      | ( "media" "=" ( MediaDesc | <"> MediaDesc <"> ) )

"hreflang" and "media", so quoting is allowed for media, but it's not 
for hreflang. I think it's correct that valid language tags never 
require quoting, but I'm not sure that disallowing quoting is the right 
thing to do here.

Which made have a closer look at existing parameters (sorry for not 
bringing this up earlier):

                      | ( "type" "=" type-name "/" subtype-name )

I believe this *definitively* needs quoting, as "/" is a separator 
character in HTTP and thus can not appear in a token.

Also, as this spec uses the RFC 2616 ABNF, we probably need to duplicate 
the statement from 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#rfc.section.3.7>:

"...Linear white space (LWS) MUST NOT be used between the type and 
subtype, ..."

Best regards, Julian