Mapping (was: Issues lists and the "preprocessing" topic)

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 07:45:50PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:

> The net result is that I don't believe that we can accomplish
> what I would consider to be the real goal, which is to have
> Protocol, Tables, and (if we keep it separate) Bidi documents
> that do not depend on Rationale for understanding or definitions
> and a Rationale document that does not depend on them. 

If we are going to keep multiple documents, then I don't think I agree
with this premise.  I see no reason why we can't have a document
(which would be the descendent of rationale, but perhaps with a
different title) that has the necessary introductory and conceptual
information (and hence is an informational document) that can then be
used in the other documents.  (Yes, I'm aware of the downref problem
there, but that doesn't seem insurmountable, does it?)

> At this
> stage, I also believe we should strive for no duplicate text
> because having duplicate text, especially at a time when we are
> still considering and changing the documents in basic ways, is
> an invitation to trouble 

> I agree strongly with this.  Duplicated text is a bad idea.
> I do have an alternate suggestion, which is that we get these
> drafts through to Proposed Standard with more or less the
> current document organization 
. . .
> clear.  Then we come back and generate Draft Standard versions
> against a stable underlying specification.  Those versions would
> move the text around, duplicating or summarizing the (then
> fairly firm) definitions and other material as needed.

I think that has the potential to lead to confusion.  Every DS-target
document would end up updating all the existing documents, and it
might become very hard to tell whether the new documents were just a
progression along the standards track or a change to the protocol that
required reissue as PS.  So I think this is a less good option,
although I won't object if that's what others think is needed.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
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