#1753718: clarify RFC compliance and bytes/string argument types.

Patch includes contributions by Isobel Hooper, incorporating suggestions from
Paul Winkler.  Reviewed by Martin Panter.

In addition to accepting the corrections for the RFC compliance wording, I
went through and corrected all the argument and return types, and made the
pattern of how the arguments and return types are documented consistent.
So, this patch also addresses #20782, though I had forgotten about that issue
and its patch.