Dave,
I agree with the essence of your note. This issue is a minor editorial one. So let's move on. Erik >----- Begin Included Message -----< Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 14:01:44 -0700 From: "Dave Crocker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [idn] Editorial comments on stringprep To: "Erik Nordmark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 12:07 PM 5/6/2002 +0200, Erik Nordmark wrote: > > Historically, Unicode Consortium has always stated that mapping to > > lowercase were more consistent and better than mapping to uppercase. At > > least for Unicode before version 2. Don't remember any exact reasons, but > > we can dig it up if you want us to. > >*If* there is such additional reasons it wouldn't >hurt to state that as part of the motivation in the draft. Erik, et al, IETF specifications sometimes explain the reasons for particular choices, but mostly they don't. On the average, we explain far more than ITU or ISO specifications, but far less that a complete historical narrative. I think that the typical guidance is to provide whatever explanation that will help people understand WHAT the specification is, and to avoid explaining the WHY behind a choice unless the choice is so unusual readers will be distracted until they understand the reason for the choice. That is, a specification could explain every decision in great detail, and it always is helpful to explain reasons... or is it? All that explanation can get in the way of reading the actual specification. And the explanation for my sending this long-winded note is that the recent postings on the mailing list frankly seem to be focusing on minor items. All are valid but many/most are minor. Your formal editorial comments were wonderfully diligent. Far better than the IETF norm for Area Director feedback. In such documents, adding minor suggestions is fine, because they are only part of a comprehensive set of comments. The issue is follow-on discussion. We should leave handling of the minor items to the document editors. The minor items do not really affect normative content of the specifications. I find myself wishing that the online discussion would focus only on the essentials, in order to get the specifications published sometime soon. d/ ---------- Dave Crocker <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com> tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850 >----- End Included Message -----<
