On 3/11/09 4:50 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
Eliot Lear wrote:
1. UA has an existing connotation that people will grab onto. This
in itself is mnemonically confusing.
It's not confusing if the meaning is related. The term "user or
agent" is the actual semantics of this value. I read that as
equivalent to "user agent".
It's not. A user agent is an application that acts on behalf of the
user but is not the user. And it is used to refer the MUA.
The basic UA/MTA model is based on the concept of delegation. Since
DKIM was created to delegate the task of claiming responsibility (from
the author to the entity doing the signing), I see it as a) consistent
with the underlying constructs of Internet mail and b) warranting
terminology for the "user or agent" component being similar.
2. If you're going to add acronyms, let them be ones that either can
be easily pronounced without having to spell them out.
Like "TCP" and "SNMP" and "BGP"?
I prefer nicely pronounceable acronyms, too, but the absence of that
pleasant feature doesn't create a veto.
And I'm not proposing a veto, Dave. I'm saying, 'yuck, but okay'
precisely because I really don't think anyone sees as desirable semantic
email ping pong to come up with a better term. Also I realized I didn't
give the other half of that "either" above which is "use short 2 or 3
letter acronyms". My personal preference for best acronym used by the
IETF is still IPoLPDN. I leave it as an exercise to the reader or the
reader's memory to understand how that was pronounced.
If you have a more pleasant acronym to suggest -- one that maintains
appropriate semantics -- by all means do so. Those of us who
developed the SDID/UAID acronyms also were not happy with the
aesthetics of the choice, but this was the best we could come up with.
If you prefer, and I'm NOT standing on my head about this one, you could
go for something like Private-Context-IDentifier (PCID), because I
think that is really what is being described here.
Eliot
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