One more point: I’ve noticed your point that at some point people just want to 
get their document through the process. I’m aware of this ‚problem‘. On the one 
hand, I think that actually good: I’m happy if people are sure about the 
content and see no problem in letting the IESG figure out the actual less 
important questions about processing. On the other hand, I agree that we should 
of course try to avoid any kind of confusion people may have. However, in this 
case I (still) don’t understand well where this confusion is coming from and as 
such, at least I, don’t know how to clarify. I’m pretty sure we will further 
discuss this at the up-coming retreat though.

Mirja


> Am 18.04.2017 um 22:29 schrieb Mirja Kuehlewind (IETF) <[email protected]>:
> 
> Hi Adrian,
> 
> again I, as AD and also as chair and contributor, didn’t notice this to be 
> such a big problem. Yes there are over and over again discussions about what 
> the right intented status is but often these are between standards track and 
> experimental or BCP and informational…
> 
> Anyway to your questions below.
> 
>> Am 15.04.2017 um 12:49 schrieb Adrian Farrel <[email protected]>:
>> 
>> So let's assume we have a terminology document in our hands. Clearly (?) you 
>> can't use terms from that document without a reference to it. Is that 
>> reference normative or not? Probably it is normative because how can the 
>> reader of a protocol spec know what is being discussed if they don't know 
>> the terms?
> 
> Often terminology does not need a normative reference; it’s rather a "if you 
> are not sure, please see these documents for better definitions". So the 
> approach that is often taken is, to list the terms and give an informational 
> reference to the document where they are specified. I think that’s a good 
> approach.
> 
> If that’s not good enough, you may also copy all or some of the terminology 
> section (usually less preferred by at least this IESG) into the protocol spec 
> itself or, of course, it still is possible to have a down-ref if that seems 
> useful in a specific case.
> 
>> 
>> Now more to an architecture document. This document describes the components 
>> and interfaces. It indicates what the senders and receivers of a protocol 
>> message are and what they are doing. Maybe in a very dry protocol spec you 
>> can avoid making a reference to the architecture normative, but probably not.
> 
> Architecture documents may be different and that's one of the cases where the 
> situation may be sometimes less clear. However, there are also protocols that 
> can be correctly implemented without understanding all architectural 
> consideration that lead to the final design. My general advise would be to 
> have architecture documents as informational and potentially briefly 
> summarize anything that may be important to know to understand the protocol 
> spec in the protocol spec itself. However, this might be different from case 
> to case.
> 
>> 
>> And what about a problem statement document that introduces terms and 
>> architecture? Isn't that document going to need to be referenced, and 
>> because the protocol specs rely on those terms and that architecture, isn't 
>> that reference normative?
> 
> See above; keep the reference informational and briefly summarize if really 
> needed.
> 
> Mirja
> 
> 
> 
> 

_______________________________________________
I2nsf mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i2nsf

Reply via email to