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1. Introduction

Many application protocols use parameters with textual (as opposed to numerical) names to identify data (media types, header fields in Internet mail messages and HTTP requests, vCard parameters and properties, etc.). Historically, designers and implementers of application protocols have often distinguished between standardized and unstandardized parameters by prefixing the names of unstandardized parameters with the string "X-" or similar constructs (e.g., "x."), where the "X" is commonly understood to stand for "eXperimental" or "eXtension".

Under this convention, the name of a parameter not only identified the data, but also embedded the status of the parameter into the name itself: a parameter defined in a specification produced by a recognized standards development organization (or registered according to processes defined in such a specification) did not start with "X-" or similar constructs, whereas a parameter defined outside such a specification or process started with "X-" or similar constructs.

As explained more fully under Appendix A, this convention was encouraged for many years in application protocols such as file transfer, email, and the World Wide Web. In particular, it was codified for email by [RFC822] (via the distinction between "Extension-fields" and "user-defined-fields"), but then removed by [RFC2822] based on implementation and deployment experience. A similar progression occurred for SIP technologies with regard to the "P-" header, as explained in [RFC5727]. The reasoning behind those changes is explored under Appendix B.

In short, although in theory the "X-" convention was a good way to avoid collisions (and attendant interoperability problems) between standardized parameters and unstandardized parameters, in practice the benefits have been outweighed by the costs associated with the leakage of unstandardized parameters into the standards space.

This document generalizes from the experience of the email and SIP communities by doing the following:

  1. Deprecates the "X-" convention for newly defined parameters in application protocols, including new parameters for established protocols. This change applies even where the "X-" convention was only implicit, and not explicitly provided, such as was done for email in [RFC822].

  2. Makes specific recommendations about how to proceed in a world without the distinction between standardized and unstandardized parameters (although only for parameters with textual names, not parameters that are expressed as numbers, which are out of the scope of this document).

  3. Does not recommend against the practice of private, local, preliminary, experimental, or implementation-specific parameters, only against the use of "X-" and similar constructs in the names of such parameters.

  4. Makes no recommendation as to whether existing "X-" parameters ought to remain in use or be migrated to a format without the "X-"; this is a matter for the creators or maintainers of those parameters.

  5. Does not override existing specifications that legislate the use of "X-" for particular application protocols (e.g., the "x-name" token in [RFC5545]); this is a matter for the designers of those protocols.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

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