Re: [media-types] The styling of media types in IETF specifications

"HANSEN, TONY L" <tony@att.com> Thu, 09 June 2016 17:43 UTC

From: "HANSEN, TONY L" <tony@att.com>
To: Sean Leonard <dev+ietf@seantek.com>, "media-types@iana.org" <media-types@iana.org>
Thread-Topic: [media-types] The styling of media types in IETF specifications
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Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2016 17:42:07 +0000
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Cc: RFC Editor <rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@greenbytes.de>
Subject: Re: [media-types] The styling of media types in IETF specifications
Precedence: list

IMO: Within a document, an author should be consistent. If they are not, that is worth pointing out, but not worth rejecting a document if they choose not to be. But advocating more than that is going too far. And it certainly doesn’t need to be written guidance anywhere.

	Tony Hansen

On 6/9/16, 11:31 AM, "media-types on behalf of Sean Leonard" <media-types-bounces@ietf.org on behalf of dev+ietf@seantek.com> wrote:

>  During the publication of draft-seantek-windows-image-03 (soon to be 
>RFC 7903), the RFC Editor questioned:
>
>> 2) We note that the names of the media types being registered
>> sometimes appear without quotation marks (e.g., image/x-wmf) and a
>> couple of times appear enclosed in double quotation marks (e.g.,
>> "image/x-wmf"). Should the usage be consistent?
>
>I checked RFC 6838, and RFC 6838 is itself inconsistent between quoting 
>and unquoting media types.
>
>How shall media types in IETF specifications be stylized in plain text, 
>and in xml2rfc? Specifically: shall they be quoted "application/pdf", or 
>unquoted application/pdf? In xml2rfc, shall they be quoted or unquoted, 
>shall the quotes be curly quotes or straight quotes, and shall the text 
>be in <tt> elements or plain?
>
>My 2¢:
>
>When referring to the media type as a string in a protocol element, in 
>plain text "application/pdf" is correct (possibly with other elements, 
>e.g., "text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1". In xml2rfc, the same situations 
>should be covered by <tt>application/pdf</tt> (no quotes).
>
>When referring to the media type as a prose statement of the contents or 
>using the media type for its semantics, do not use quotes and do not 
>encase in <tt>. Examples:
>
>   An application that renders application/pdf data needs to put it in a 
>window with scroll bars.
>
>   When a generator generates text/html, it SHOULD balance the tags.
>
>Basically the use of the media type can be substituted by a prose and 
>possibly more unwieldy description, such as:
>
>   An application that renders PDFs needs to put it in a window with 
>scroll bars.
>
>   When a generator generates HTML documents, it SHOULD balance the tags.
>
>
>Thank you,
>
>Sean
>
>
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[media-types] The styling of media types in IETF … Sean Leonard
Re: [media-types] The styling of media types in I… HANSEN, TONY L