What is a format

[martinthomson]

Inspired partly by Carsten's work on the terminology, I noted this text:

There are many potential formats for payloads; for example, JSON [RFC8259], XML [XML], and CBOR [RFC7049]. Best practices for their use are out of scope for this document.

Applications should register distinct media types for each format they define;

So, "formats" is simultaneously used for the generic syntax (like ASN.1+DER), and for the distinct instantiation with the application-defined schema. I think that the first might instead be reworded as:

There are a few options that might be used in defining the format for payloads; for example, JSON ...

[mnot]

PTAL

[martinthomson]

LGTM. Thanks.