Re: [idn] Document Status?

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Saturday, August 31, 2002 10:32 AM +0800 James Seng
<jseng@pobox.org.sg> wrote:

> I concur with Paul. The authors and the co-chairs have been
> working with the ADs to address these issues. We have several
> emails discussion on the drafts. Any non-editorial changes
> (e.g. the bidi & unicode 3.2) was and will be bought to the
> group again.

James,

It seems to me that Dave (and I) have raised two sorts of issues
which are very different in character than, e.g., bidi and
unicode 3.2.   One has to do with the _style_ of the documents,
e.g., to paraphrase Dave (I hope accurately), whether they
specify a protocol or outline an implementation.   That is
somewhat a matter of taste, and you could legitimately argue
that it is an editorial matter, as long as the specification is
complete and unambiguous.

The other issues go directly to the questions of completeness
and ambiguity.  They are, by definition, substantive rather than
editorial unless there is very clear consensus within the IETF
about what the answers are to any questions that are unresolved
by  the text and the text merely needs to be clarified to
reflect that consensus.

To be specific about this,

(i) If there is any question at all about how a given codepoint
or character is to be interpreted, or whether it is permitted,
in any context, then that question must be resolved.  Without
such a resolution, the document would contain "known
deficiencies", which makes it inappropriate for standardization.

(ii) If there is a substantive claim that the document cannot be
implemented in an interoperable way without out-of-band
profiling or oral tradition --and I think Dave has made exactly
that claim, although in different language-- then either

	* the document must be fixed to reflect that fact (and,
	I would think, re-Last-Called through the whole IETF
	process, since introducing such profiling in a standards
	track protocol is a very serious step), or
	
	* the document must be fixed to eliminate the ambiguity/
	choices, or
	
	* the documents should be published as Experimental, not
	standards track, until we better understand just what
	profiling issues are involved, how the profiles should
	be specified, and what impact on interoperability
	profiling would cause,  or

	* someone needs to come up with a persuasive case that
	Dave (and I) have misread and misinterpreted the
	document.  And, procedurally, I believe that case needs
	to persuade the members of the WG and other concerned
	parties in the IETF who are interested enough to study
	the issues, not just the co-chairs, editors, and AD.

Again, given that these documents (or some approximation to
them) made it through Last Call, I think that the co-chairs,
editors, and IESG trying to work through these issues to see if
a solution can be found that satisfies the IESG is quite
reasonable.  But that solution then needs to be cycled back
through the system to be sure it still has WG and IETF consensus.

      john