Venn diagram in -defs-06

Erik van der Poel erikv at google.com
Tue Mar 3 20:18:26 CET 2009


John,

This is my personal opinion: The diagrams are still useful, but
perhaps the binary and bit-string should be removed since they are not
Non-ASCII text.

If the working group agrees with you that this is splitting hairs,
just leave them in.

Thanks for all your hard work,

Erik

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:07 AM, John C Klensin <klensin at jck.com> wrote:
>
>
> --On Tuesday, March 03, 2009 10:40 -0800 Erik van der Poel
> <erikv at google.com> wrote:
>
>> Actually, binary and bit-string values might sometimes consist
>> entirely of octets less than 128, so the top-level split
>> should be:
>>
>> text vs non-text
>>
>> Then non-text can be split into binary vs bit-string, and text
>> can be split into ASCII vs Non-ASCII.
>
> Erik,
>
> Three observations from your frustrated editor (and apologies in
> advance if the frustration comes through too much):
>
>        (1) Bit-string values are a different label type, so
>        they aren't part of a top-level split and their octet
>        values are substantially irrelevant.   No disrespect
>        intended, but it would really be helpful if people
>        engaging in this discussion spent a bit of time
>        understanding DNS fundamentals.
>
>        (2) These pictures are tricky to construct and trickier
>        yet to fit neatly within the 69 character by 49 line
>        constraint of the RFC format.  I've had several "can't
>        you stop Figure 1 from splitting across page boundaries"
>        comments.  The answer is that, at present, the "figure"
>        includes the comment that precedes it and the notes that
>        follow, which causes it to exceed that limit, so "no".
>        I can make it fit by pulling the notes into a separate
>        text block and will do that when (and if) we are
>        satisfied about the content being right.  However, I'll
>        have to force things to stay together when I do that
>        with manual page breaks.  That is error-prone and likely
>        to be fouled up by further editing, so my inclination to
>        do it while we are still making changes is very low.
>
>        Incidentally, the reason for splitting off Figure 2 from
>        Figure 1 was related to the formatting issue, not a
>        substantive decision.
>
>        (3) Several weeks ago, after Defs-04 was posted, there
>        there were multiple comments on the list that indicated
>        that the picture --not just the idea of a picture-- was
>        helpful.   I hope the changes and corrections since
>        (including the one suggested by Andrew) helped clarify
>        it further.  But the more we make it complicated by
>        hair-splitting, the less useful it becomes.    If the
>        consensus now is that the picture cannot be represented
>        in a satisfactory way unless far more information is
>        inserted than I can fit, I can certainly pull it back
>        out.
>
> So, to be very explicit about this...
>
> (i) Do you (and others) believe that the pictures have outlived
> their usefulness and should be pulled out?
>
> (ii) If not, and given the nature of "bit-string" discussed
> above, do you think it is useful to cut the picture a different
> way?  And, if so, can you supply an ASCII text file that
> contains exactly what you want with a caption and image area
> that occupies no more than a 69 character by 49 line block?
>
> best,
>     john
>


More information about the Idna-update mailing list