As to Keld's recent political commentary, I can only say that Appendix
F seems to quite clearly describe the procedures whereby he can propose
registering his work with the IANA. The text there and the process there
both seem clear enough and it is a pity that he resorts to political means
in what is otherwise a technical forum. His concerns with the IESG/IAB
should be directed to them rather than to this IETF WG.
While I tend to side with Keld on the importance and need for continuing
to refine and promote RFC-CHAR, I happen to agree with Ran on this. The IESG
rejected attempts of ours to cite documents that are on firmer footing than
RFC-CHAR in MIME -- in particular, the reference to the work of the NETFAX
working group had to go. The NETFAX RFC is in fact ahead of MIME; it has
already gone to the IESG and been approved subject to a single, small change.
This change has been made and the ball is now back in the IESG's court.
Despite this, we are unable to cite this document, even though the NETFAX
working group requested that we do so and we were certainly willing to
do so (as we in fact were with RFC-CHAR).
As authors we have to abide by what the IESG tells us we can do. And they
told us we cannot do this. I don't like it, but I cannot change it.
In my view Keld and the rest of us RFC-CHAR supporters have two choices. One,
we can continue to fight about this with the IESG. I frankly do not think
this has any chance of succeeding. Or, we can continue to work on RFC-CHAR,
refine it, and release it from this working group and we'll see how the IESG
deals with it. These two approaches are really exclusive of one another, too.
If we continue to hold up MIME in any way in an attempt to get stuff reinserted
into it we'll never have time to really grapple with RFC-CHAR. (I personally
have been so busy with other matters that I have not had a chance to pull
Keld's latest documents and review them.)
We also have a third approach, and that is to continue to bicker about this
in this forum. This is not going to accomplish anything, since no matter
how many show-stoppers or whatever you toss at the two of us we cannot
reinsert the lost reference. The IESG has spoken and we're going to follow
their guidelines.
That's all I have to say about this -- nothing new, just a renewed plea to
get back to the technical discussions we're supposed to be having here.
Ned