Re: Issue with MIB compilation requirement in "AD Review of I-Ds" (http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html)

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>]

>>>>> C M Heard writes:

Mike> I agree with you, and this is what I wrote:

:   Restricting descriptors and labels to 32 characters often conflicts
:   with the recommendation that they be mnemonic and (for descriptors)
:   the requirement that they be unique (see RFC 2578, Section 3.1).  The
:   SMIv2 recommendation to limit names to 32 characters SHOULD be set
:   aside when it comes in conflict with these considerations.

What about this text:

    The SMIv2 recommends that descriptors and names are not longer
    than 32 characters (RFC 2578 section 3.1 and RFC 2579 section
    3). This recommendation often conflicts with the recommendation
    that names and descriptors be mnemonic and that they be unique.
    When it comes to a conflict between these recommendations, it is
    common practice that the 32 character limit is set aside in favour
    of uniqueness and clarity of names and descriptors. This document
    therefore suggests that the 32 character length recommendation can
    be safely ignored. This does of course not affect the upper limit
    of 64 characters for names and descriptors, which continues to
    exist.

Not sure this is much better, probably just different. I think it is
important to refer to the same rule in RFC 2579 (that is what I
added). I also wanted to express that it is safe to ignore this 32
character rule in all cases (such as if it would have never been part
of SMIv2) while your text sounds a bit more like a conditional
statement (and compilers usually have a hard time to judge what a 
good mnemonic name is).

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder    <http://www.informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de/schoenw/>