The IESG has approved the following document: - 'Deprecating the X- Prefix and Similar Constructs in Application Protocols' (draft-ietf-appsawg-xdash-05.txt) as Best Current Practice This document is the product of the Applications Area Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Pete Resnick and Barry Leiba. A URL of this Internet Draft is: http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-appsawg-xdash/ Technical Summary Historically, designers and implementers of application protocols have often distinguished between "standard" and "non-standard" parameters by prefixing the latter with the string "X-" or similar constructions. In practice, this convention causes more problems than it solves. Therefore, this document deprecates the "X-" convention for newly defined textual parameters in application protocols. Working Group Summary The WG discussed the scope of the document, in particular if it intends to change any existing IANA registries which use "X-" namespace (or similar) and whether it applies to registries that use numeric values. As per WG discussion, the answer to both questions above is "no" and the document was clarified to reflect that. Document Quality The document doesn't define a protocol. At least 1 specification already voluntarily conforms to the recommendations specified in the document. Personnel Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@isode.com> is the document shepherd. Pete Resnick <presnick@qualcomm.com> is the cognizant AD.
