Outstanding issues(1): Document organization
John C Klensin
klensin at jck.com
Sun May 25 20:05:36 CEST 2008
Hi.
In the hope of getting some discussion going that focuses on
unresolved issues in the WG's charter, I'm about to post four
notes that contain a list of substantive outstanding issues and
loose ends with the documents for which I hold the pen. This
is the first of those four. Please, for all four, if you open
up significant new topics, change the subject line. And, for
the second, third, and fourth, please use separate threads for
each issue so that we can discuss them, rather than addressing
omnibus notes to the editor: if these topics were not at least
somewhat uncertain or controversial, they would have been
resolved and reflected in the documents by now.
The first, second, and fourth of these notes will be posted
today; the third will be posted as soon as I've finished the
review of inputs to Protocol that I promised Mark.
The WG charter contains an explicit decision point item for the
organizational structure of the documents. We have yet to have
that discussion. I am aware of three basic proposals:
(1) Retain the current structure of Rationale/ Protocol/ Bidi /
Tables, possibly with variations of:
(1.1) Move the "Contextual Rules appendix" (now in Protocol,
previously in "Rationale") into a separate document. The fourth
note in this series addresses specific issues with the
Contextual Rule material. There is also material in Rationale
(especially the material that describes how the rules are
maintained) that would presumably migrate to such a document.
The advantage of doing this is that the contextual material
really is separate material that should be maintained
separately, especially since it may change more rapidly than
anything else. The disadvantage is that it means one more place
to look.
(1.2) Move the "Contextual Rules appendix" into "Tables". The
advantage of this is that it constitutes material similar to
that in Tables, where "ContextJ" and "ContextO" are determined.
(1.3) Drop the "Contextual Rules appendix" entirely, moving the
explanatory material back to Rationale and the substantive list
of rules into an IANA registry. This is what was anticipated
originally, but may not be reasonable.
(2) Fold the substance of Bidi into Protocol and some of the
explanatory material in it into Rationale, leaving the structure
as Rationale/ Protocol/ Tables, possibly with the variations
above. If we decide to do this, it may make sense to make the
actual transformation fairly late to facilitate separate
discussion of the Bidi issues and other things since those
issues are fairly specialized. We would, of course, want to
identify the materials to be moved and to where much earlier.
(3) Drop the Rationale document entirely and remove all
explanatory material from Protocol, Tables, and Bidi, collapsing
then then-shortened Bidi into Protocol and leaving us with two
documents, Protocol and Tables. This is the approach to take if
we believe that our only appropriate audience is implementers of
the protocol and that we should provide them with rules and
steps and not guidance. (I have referred to this elsewhere as a
"this is how it is, just do it" approach instead of explaining
to people why we have done things and they should conform.) If
we believe our audience extends in part to those who will need
to construct policies and guidance for zone administrators and
to those trying to understand the appropriate and inappropriate
uses of IDNA in applications and other contexts, it would be,
IMO, a serious mistake. Reasons for both positions have been
discussed on-list, but I don't think we have reached any sort of
consensus.
If there are other organizational proposals, I wish someone
would start formulating them and sharing them with the rest of
us.
john
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