At 8:36 AM 10/19/94, Craig_Everhart(_at_)transarc(_dot_)com wrote:
The point is that you can't re-deploy a lot of software at the moment
that IETF or IANA recognizes a registration.
Name registration is a fairly simple process, not requiring an RFC to be
issued beforehand. So, if you draw a timeline, you could have:
-- name is illegal
<name is registered>
-- name is legal, but perhaps not really safe to use, since def'n might change
<RFC is issued>
-- name is legal *and* well-defined
Of course, this only occurs for names that are for inventions of the
standards process (eg, text/enriched). Names that are based on external
things (like many vendor file formats) are well-defined as soon as they're
registered, and are likely never to appear as RFC's anyway.
So the bottom-line answer is to register the content-type, then you can (if
you choose) use it while you nail down its exact meaning. Not entirely
neat, but I don't see anything else to do.
--
Steve Dorner, Qualcomm Incorporated. "Oog make mission statement."