As the person who is guilty of using the word "octet" in the draft, and who
encouraged others to do the same, I suppose I should say why I did.
When I was lobbying for it, I said, "'octet' is the politically correct way
to say 'byte'" and gave pretty much the same explanations that Padgett and
others did. Once, long ago, there were other size bytes than the ones that
ones we're all used to. I agree that it's an odd term, and one that makes a
lot of people just wonder.
I can think of a couple of easy solutions. One is that we put in a
paragraph explaining that an octet is a PC byte (in more ways than one).
Another is that we change all the uses of "octet" to "byte" and put in a
paragraph explaining that for this documentation, when we say "byte" we
mean an eight-bit byte, the type that many other standards call an octet.
Either is fine with me.
Jon
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Jon Callas jon(_at_)pgp(_dot_)com
Chief Scientist 555 Twin Dolphin Drive
Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. Suite 570
(415) 596-1960 Redwood Shores, CA 94065