Sam Hartman wrote:
Hi. With the exception of packet diagrams, I think all the examples
you bring up benefit significantly from clear textual description.
Sam
I am not saying that clear text is not needed to accompany a diagram.
However a diagram allows a lot less text to be written producing a
shorter clearer draft with less clutter.
For example you could say the following in text : router A connects to
router B and D, the cost from A to B is 2, and the cost from A to D is 4.
Router B connects to router C. The cost to router A is 6, and the cost to
router C is 10. Router C connects to router D. The cost to router B is 9
and the cost to router D is 8. The cost from router D to router A is 16
and the cost to router A is 99.
In fact you would probably need a table to make sure that you did not
make a mistake. In either case it is hard for most people to figure
out the what the topology is much less imagine packet actions.
Now compare this to:
"The network and costs are as shown in figure foo."
Simple text and the visualisation is already done for you so you
can focus on the problem.
Now I realise the above could be done in ascii art, but we have problems
that need 13 or more nodes to set up.
I
believe I'd think that even if I could see the diagrams and I believe
I have enough experience with visualization (although not sight) to be
confident in that belief.
As such, I don't believe these diagrams should be normative.
I actually thin that many of the tunnel overlay network documents
(PWE3, L2VPN, L3VPN) could benefit significantly from more focus on
the text of the descriptions of situations being described.
It is probably a question of how we work and the tools that we
find most effective.
If you believe that normative documents are required, I'd like you to
explain why the diagrams cannot be described in the text, why doing so
would decrease the quality of the specification, or why doing so would
not be a useful investment in our time.
One reason is that it takes a lot of text to describe what can be drawn
with a few lines and symbols. Many people will get lost in the text and
in any case would have to transcribe the text into a diagram for
themselves before they could understand what is happening.
- Stewart
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf