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Re: 9 July 2003 draft of "Client handling of MIME headers" available

>> At no point has the IESG ever been responsible for media type
>> registrations,
>> as is clearly documented in the RFCs that define the process for those
>> registrations.
>
> On the contrary:
>
> "Registration in the IETF tree requires approval  by the IESG"
>   -- 2.1.1.  IETF Tree
>   ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2048.txt
>  cited from
>  "Application for MIME Media Type"
>  http://www.iana.org/cgi-bin/mediatypes.pl
>  <-- http://www.iana.org/protocols/forms.htm
>   http://www.iana.org/

That isn't the process, Dan -- that is the end result: ALL
non-informational RFCs are approved by the IESG as standard procedure.
The registration process by which IANA reserves the type name in
the public registry is in section 2.3:

==========
    2.3.  Registration Procedure

    The following procedure has been implemented by the IANA for review
    and approval of new media types.  This is not a formal standards
    process, but rather an administrative procedure intended to allow
    community comment and sanity checking without excessive time delay.
    For registration in the IETF tree, the normal IETF processes should
    be followed, treating posting of an internet-draft and announcement
    on the ietf-types list (as described in the next subsection) as a
    first step.  For registrations in the vendor or personal tree, the
    initial review step described below may be omitted and the type
    registered directly by submitting the template and an explanation
    directly to IANA (at iana@iana.org).  However, authors of vendor or
    personal media type specifications are encouraged to seek community
    review and comment whenever that is feasible.

    2.3.1.  Present the Media Type to the Community for Review

    Send a proposed media type registration to the "ietf-types@iana.org"
    mailing list for a two week review period.  This mailing list has
    been established for the purpose of reviewing proposed media and
    access types. Proposed media types are not formally registered and
    must not be used; the "x-" prefix specified in RFC 2045 can be used
    until registration is complete.

    The intent of the public posting is to solicit comments and feedback
    on the choice of type/subtype name, the unambiguity of the references
    with respect to versions and external profiling information, and a
    review of any interoperability or security considerations. The
    submitter may submit a revised registration, or withdraw the
    registration completely, at any time.

    2.3.2.  IESG Approval

    Media types registered in the IETF tree must be submitted to the IESG
    for approval.

    2.3.3.  IANA Registration

    Provided that the media type meets the requirements for media types
    and has obtained approval that is necessary, the author may submit
    the registration request to the IANA, which will register the media
    type and make the media type registration available to the community.
=============

There is no record of the W3C ever having submitted the "first step"
as documented above for any of the following media types that people
here have been complaining about not being in the standard configuration
of Web servers:

    application/mathml+xml
    application/rdf+xml
    application/srgs
    application/srgs+xml
    application/xslt+xml
    image/svg+xml

And there are probably a lot more like them that I simply couldn't
find via the W3C site search.  It would help if there was at least
one page on the W3C site that listed the media types under development
by all of the working groups.

Let's pretend for a second that the first step was actually followed,
placing the type on the radar screen.  After the review period, the
application is sent to the IESG for review.   Given that they already
approved RFC 3023, it is reasonable to guess that the IESG is not going
to prevent a W3C group from registering in the IETF tree.  All you have
to do is publish an internet draft containing the same type of 
information
as provided in 3023 for the five types it registered -- mostly just
references to the long-lived URIs provided on the W3C site for the
format specifications -- which should be a simple copy and paste from
the relevant W3C specification sections containing that form.
Send a note to the IESG pointing to the I-D, placing it on the
public IESG work queue -- this gives them something to approve
and IANA something to refer to.  Finally, submit the form to IANA
with reference to the IESG work item.

If you haven't been following the above process but rather dealt with
the ADs directly, then it is also possible that the IESG has already
approved registration of the type.  In that case, send the form to
IANA with reference to the IESG minutes --- the IESG will not submit
the form for you.

....Roy

Received on Thursday, 10 July 2003 13:57:00 UTC