Network Working Group I. King
Internet-Draft Microsoft Corporation
Expires: March 6, 2004 L. Masinter
Adobe Systems Incorporated
September 6, 2003
The vnd and prs Trees for URI Scheme Names
draft-king-vnd-urlscheme-03.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes a way in which individuals and vendors can
define URI schemes in a way that avoids name collisions, but with
relaxed registration requirements. This is done by allowing URI
schemes that start with "vnd-" or "prs-", analogous to similar
mechanism MIME media types.
Note
Discuss this document on uri@w3.org. A HTML version of this document
can be found at http://larry.masinter.net/vnduri.html.
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1. Introduction
The registration process for URI schemes, described in RFC 2717 [2],
requires IESG review and approval of all proposed scheme names within
the "IETF tree", which encompasses simple, short, often descriptive
URI scheme names (such as http:, fax:, or mailto:).
However, there are circumstances where it is desirable to allocate a
URI scheme name outside of this process. This document establishes
alternative trees, "vnd-" and "prs-", corresponding to the similar
concept for MIME type registrations[4]. The rules for use and
registration of URI schemes with in these trees are intended to be
analogous those for the corresponding MIME type trees.
The "vnd-" tree is used for URI schemes associated with available
products or services; "vendor" or "producer" are construed as
equivalent and broadly. The registration belongs to the vendor or
organization producing software or offering a service that utilizes
the URI scheme. Registration in the vendor tree is distinguished by
the leading "vnd-", followed, at the discretion of the registration,
either by the scheme name or (preferably) by an IANA-approved
designation of the producer's name, followed by the specific scheme
name. Designations of producers should match those used for media
types, and follows the same criteria.
Similarly, the "prs-" tree is intended for URI schemes used
experimentally or as individual contributions. The owner of
"personal" registrations and associated specifications is the person
or entity making the registration, or one to whom responsibility has
been transferred as described below.
Note that earlier drafts of this document suggested using "." as the
delimiter between "vnd" and the URI scheme. However, RFC 2717 [2]
reserved the "-" character for non-IETF registrations (and not "."),
so the delimiter was changed for compatibility. Because these
earlier drafts were available for several years, however, there may
be some URI schemes with "vnd." still in use.
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2. Syntax
The general syntax for these new trees follows the syntax recommended
in RFC 2717 [2]:
scheme = ("vnd-" / "prs-") [ vendor-id "-" ] scheme-id
vendor-id = ALPHA *(ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" )
scheme-id = ALPHA *(ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "-" / "." )
2.1 Syntax notes
Note that RFC 2396 [1] limits the characters in URI scheme names to
include only letters, digits, plus ("+"), period ("."), or hyphen
("-"); further, that although scheme names are case insensitive, the
canonical form is lowercase and documents that specify schemes must
do so using lowercase letters. These restrictions apply to
<vendor-id> and <scheme-id>.
To avoid confusion, a <vendor-id> may not contain a hyphen "-" or a
period ".".
2.2 Choosing a vendor-id
The vendor-id is an IANA-approved designation, consisting of a short
string of characters that is sufficient to uniquely identify the
organization.
To avoid exhaustion of the namespace, vendors are encouraged to
establish only one vendor-id, although it is recognized that large
organizations may actually consist of multiple sub-units.
Organizations should use the same vendor-id for MIME types and URI
schemes.
The organization may be a business (whether for-profit or not),
governmental unit, educational institution, or any other entity,
organization or community which is regularly engaged in producing
software. The term "vendor" is used in this document for simplicity.
IANA may choose to reject a request for a particular vendor-id or
propose a different vendor-id based on IANA's best judgment as to
whether the string proposed is appropriate for the organization
requesting it.
2.3 Syntax for scheme-id
There are no formal restrictions on the scheme-id except that the
characters be chosen from those allowed in a URI scheme name
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(letters, digits, plus, period, hyphen), and be registered using the
lowercase form. The registrar is encouraged to select a scheme-id
that is short and descriptive of its purpose.
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3. Requirements for Scheme Name Registration
3.1 General Requirements
The purpose of registration is to give notice to the Internet
community of the existence the scheme. Registration of the vendor-id
is required, and serves to partition the namespace (and avoid
collision).
Similarly, to avoid collision and misuse, registration of "prs-" and
"vnd-" schemes without vendor-id parts is required.
If the vendor-id is registered, registration of a specific scheme-id
is optional; if supplied, the registrar may supply whatever
information is appropriate. Registration may only consist of the
scheme name, or might include a pointer to appropriate documentation
of the scheme's syntax and semantics.
3.2 Registering the vendor-id
The request for vendor-id registration may be sent separately, or may
be included in a scheme name registration. The initial request for
vendor-id names must contain the proposed vendor-id, the vendor's
legal business name, principal business address, telephone number,
and contact information for a person or position that will be
responsible for the use of the vendor's subtree. The vendor should
inform IANA if of changes in this information, and may explicitly
transfer ownership of its vendor-id and associated subtree.
A given vendor-id can be issued only once, and it does not expire.
This is to avoid possible name collisions, since using a registered
vendor-id means there may be URI schemes that are not otherwise
registered.
IANA should maintain a public registry of the vendor-id's, together
with contact information for each vendor so registered. A form for
submission of this information (together with scheme information as
appropriate) is provided in this document.
3.3 Publishing Scheme-Specific Information
While public exposure and review of a URI scheme created in the
"vnd-" or "prs-" tree is not required, it is encouraged. The
'uri-review@ietf.org' mailing list may be used for review of new URI
schemes, even if they are not in the IETF tree.
Publication of the scheme description as an Informational RFC may be
appropriate for those schemes of sufficient interest to the IETF
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community; however, this mechanism is usually appropriate only for
URI schemes in the IETF tree.
Note that a separate, explicit request should be made to IANA (at
IANA@iana.org) to register schemes; discussion on uri-review@ietf.org
is insufficient. The request should follow the form is provided in
Appendix A of this document.
Internet Drafts intended for publication as Informational RFCs
describing new URI schemes should also contain an 'IANA
Considerations' section with the request for registration included.
The registration would occur at the time of publication of the
document as an RFC.
3.4 Change Control
The vendor is the owner of all schemes within its registered tree,
has sole responsibility for management of the sub-tree created by its
vendor-id, and owns change control for any URI schemes deployed
therein. If a vendor publishes information about a vnd URI scheme by
either of the methods described above, changes to the syntax or
semantics of that URI scheme must be subsequently published by the
same medium as originally employed.
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4. Security Considerations
The vendor identified by the vendor-id part of the URI scheme name
should be consulted for any information regarding the URI scheme and
its implementation. To that end, vendors must provide a point of
contact that can be reasonably authenticated, for instance, common
business contact information (business address, telephone number,
etc.). (This is addressed in the registration section above.)
The registration process encourages vendors to analyze and disclose
the security implications of using particular URI schemes.
Unregistered schemes or those without appropriate security
considerations may be unsafe to use.
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5. IANA Considerations
IANA currently maintains a registry of URI scheme names, per the
requirements of RFC 2717. Scheme names established under this process
should also be entered in that registry, when requested.
IANA should maintain a separate registry of vendor-id strings,
relating the vendor-id to the vendor information (business contact
information, etc.) provided in the registration. The vendor-id string
list should be used also for vendor strings used in media types, as
per RFC 2048. IANA should reject a vendor-id registration if it
duplicates an existing registration, seems inappropriate, confusing,
misleading, or too similar to another registered vendor-id, at IANA's
discression. IANA may offer an alternative vendor-id string that IANA
considers more appropriate.
A party whose vendor-id registration has been rejected or modified
may ask for review of the registration by the IESG, in the manner
described in RFC 2026, section 6.5.
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6. Registration forms
Form for vendor information:
Vendor-ID: proposed identifier
Name: formal name of organization
Address: full name of organization
Telephone: full telephone number
Type: type of organization (corporation, educational
institution, etc.)
Contact Information: name of contact person and location
information
The form for scheme names follows RFC 2717, section 6.0.
Scheme name:
Scheme syntax:
Character encoding considerations:
Intended usage:
Applications and/or protocols which use this URL scheme name:
Interoperability considerations:
Security considerations:
Relevant publications:
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Normative References
[1] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998.
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Informative References
[2] Petke, R. and I. King, "Registration Procedures for URL Scheme
Names", RFC 2717, November 1999.
[3] Masinter, L., Alvestrand, H., Zigmond, D. and R. Petke,
"Guidelines for New URL Schemes", RFC 2718, November 1999.
[4] Freed, N., Klensin, J. and J. Postel, "Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures", RFC
2048, November 1996.
Authors' Addresses
Ian King
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
US
Phone: +1 425 703 2293
EMail: iking@microsoft.com
Larry Masinter
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Ave
San Jose, CA 95110
US
Phone: +1 408 536 3024
EMail: LMM@acm.org
URI: http://larry.masinter.net
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