Note that the bottom line of Keld's response to my note of this
morning is very simple.
1. His RFC which is intended to be standards track ("mnemonic")
explicitly references another RFC ("char") which is NOT standards
track as if it were a standard and uses it ("char") to specify
precisely how "mnemonic" must be implemented. That dependence on a
non-standards track document is alone sufficient to make IESG/IAB
standardisation of "mnemonic" alone inappropriate.
I know too little of IETF standardisation to address this point.
I have just followed directions from the chair of the 822ext group,
Greg Vaudreuil, on the splitting of the previous RFC-CHAR into
RFC-CHAR and RFC-MNEM. I assume that Greg can state why the
current work here has the status as it has. Greg?
2. Note also that the Vietnamese mnemonic encoding which has been
used world-wide on USENET (i.e. in soc.culture.vietnamese) and the
joint Internet, Bitnet, UUCPnet email network (i.e. viet-net lists)
for YEARS by the Vietnamese language community is being ignored.
I am not ignoring it, as you may have seen from my earlier
comments on it. Also the mnemonic scheme described in RFC-MNEM
has been in use for years in the european environment.
Unfortunately they cannot be united, as far as I can se,
or the way to unite them is via the RFC-MIME charset spec, IMHO.
The Vietnamese encoding is most adequately described as just
another charset.
In effect, although he could rephrase the mnemonic framework to be
general enough to support different profiles for different
circumstances (a Viet-Net profile and an EUnet profile and possibly
other profiles, for example), he REFUSES to make those changes and
would PREVENT other usages which PREDATE his from using the general
mechanism. This is not evidence that he is willing to work in a
cooperative fashion on "mnemonic" and is in fact evidence that this
work is NOT coming from the IETF working group but rather is coming
only from a single member of that working group as an INDIVIDUAL
effort.
Well, I could include a viet-net profile in rfc-mnem, but for what
use? Why should it be better than having two separate RFCs?
There is a RFC underway now, separately written for viet-net.
I think the framework specified in RFC-mime (charset) is general enough
for doing this, and we do not need another level to do it.
I just recently made a move the other way, removing the iso-2022-jp
spec from the set of IDs, I have been drafting.
Are you sure that the viet-net specs PREDATE mnemonic?
As far as I have heard there is no firm spec on VIET-NET (or it
has just appeared recently), and that usage has been varying.
Well, it does not matter that much anyway which came first, IMHO.
Both specs have historical use and there is a need for both.
The one does not PREVENT the other.
I have seen the viet-net specs, and I can understand that it
is superior for the Vietnamese language to the mnemonics I have
created (with assistance from vietnamese knowledgeable people)
for Vietnamese. I have also previously stated that in public mail.
I have taken many advises from the group, and the state of what is
now there is in major areas quite different to what I have advised.
I have followed all directions from the WG meetings, and this is more
than can be said for the other IDs of the group. I have a network
organisation backing me (EUnet) and possibly more organisational
support (Nordunet). But I am of cause the author/editor of the IDs
and that normally gives some saying about what should happen.
I feel that you are just shouting loud, Ran, without any
technical input. To me it looks like obstruction manoeuvres
just like your "investigations" - trying to damage my reputation.
Why don't you address my points in the previous mail?
I think you know very well that the mnemonic and the viet-net
specs are incompatible, and cannot be unified. viet-net
breaches some fundamental design principles in mnemonic, like
using variant ISO 646 characters. viet-net is limited to
vietnamese and would be very hard to generalize - it is very dependent
on the accents used in vietnamese, and that other accents cannot exist.
Have you got any constructive technical input on the matter, Ran?
Ran
atkinson(_at_)itd(_dot_)nrl(_dot_)navy(_dot_)mil
Keld