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

[Sean Leonard <[e-mail]>]

  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