Hi David, > Let me start about by saying that I am often curmudgeonly, so please > forgive any negative tone to this message; I am making the > comment to be > constructively critical. I have had experience dealing with problems > similar to those I find in this proposal, so please pay > attention to the > concerns.
I have no problem with that (besides that I don't find a negative tone;)). I value your opinion much as you obviously have experience in this regard. > I want to clarify my position, which you aggregated with other > positions, and inadvertently misstated. sorry - that actually was what I understood... > Since it has my name in the > greeting, I would like to make sure your misstatement doesn't mislead > anybody about my position. > > I did not say that XML-based syntax is a good idea. It may be; it may > not be; whether it is will depend on lots of factors that need to be > weighed carefully. Two of the potential benefits of using XML > are reuse > of existing implemented standards (which benefits both operators and > implementors) and interoprability with other application > formats (which > benefits application developers and consequently application users). > > I think an XML-"like" syntax may be a BAD idea because it achieves > neither of these two benefits, and adds the negative > tradeoffs of having > to maintain the new XML-like syntax, requiring operators to learn a > unique syntax for syslog, and having to support a unique new syntax in > implementations. Making it "look like" XML doesn't mean it gets the > benefits of using XML. I see the argument. Do you think that relying on something already accepted - like BEEP XML in RFC3080 is a solution? As far as I can see, RFC3080 is increasingly becoming implemented. So while not full XML, it may be a standard that works "as expected"? > > Beyond this point, I make only one other comment about the proposal. > Using existing terms for existing standards to refer to non-compliant > "look-like" things benefits few. It is misleading and adds > confusion to > the already difficult process of standardization. ... understood and agreed. > I think it is a bad > idea to refer to your proposal as "simple XML" - it is either > XML or it > is not - or to refer to the information as a "cookie", which has a > commonly accepted usage which this usage is not. This, too is a very valid point. I never thought about it, just picked the word from syslog-sign. I think we (syslog-sec WG) should probably think about another term. I will spawn off a new thread for this. Thanks again for your very helpful comments! Rainer
