Re: draft minutes from the sming interim:

[Frank Strauss <strauss@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>]

Hi!

David> [...] a well defined and standard annotation mechanism as
David> part of the language is really very useful. There are several
David> examples of the annotation that exist in commercial products
David> such as the MIB compiler from Epilogue (WindRiver) to assist
David> in generation of code for SNMP agents, and from Novell and HP
David> to provide additional information about notifications.
>> 
>> I agree.

Andy> I'm not disagreeing that MIB compiler writers may want to add
Andy> directives to MIB modules to assist in the generation of output
Andy> documents.  I'm concerned that such an effort is inappropriate
Andy> wrt/ the charter of the SMIng WG.  I'm concerned that it will
Andy> require a lengthy effort, interesting to a small number of
Andy> people, to agree on the syntax and semantics of these
Andy> directives.

There is no need to agree on specific directives. Just the way,
annotations are support, would have to be discussed.

Andy> I'm concerned that these directives are not universally useful,
Andy> but rather specific to particular tools and vendors.  MIB
Andy> readers want to view MIBs in a consistent format.  The WG
Andy> already decided not to pursue compiler directives (in SLC).

What I have in mind is RFC 3216, 4.1.6. The way the NMRG proposal
supports language extensions doesn't break the compatibility of
parsers that don't support these extensions. 

 -frank (still confused why we move in circles concerning accepted
         and rejected `objectives')