At 3:15 PM -0400 4/21/03, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
While right-thinking people no doubt cite to paragraph and section
numbers, the world is not entirely composed of right-thinking people.
Having consistent canonical page numbers eliminates a source of potential
confusion especially when dealing with groups outside the IETF...
Certainly agreed. But it is also true that the formatting
requirements for I-Ds are one of many obstacles to "outside"
participation in the IETFprocess. Although it may seem silly to
some (and some of you may not want to hear from them anyway), the
IETF's formatting rules do present a (relatively small) hurdle to
public policy advocates and other outsiders.
I personally think that there is value in allowing those less
familiar with the IETF an easier way to express their views in a
standard format acceptable to the IETF. And frankly, it would give
the often seen reaction (blowoff?) "write it up and submit it as an
I-D" more power if the I-D route was a little easier for non-IETFers.
So at the risk of heresy, I would consider expressly allowing an
OPTIONAL "more lenient" format for "individual" I-Ds. Specifically,
I would suggest a rule saying that the lenient format CANNOT be used
for:
- any WG-chartered I-D
- any individual I-D which is proposed to move RFC status
- any I-D for which formal IESG/IAB review is sought for any other purpose
So basically the lenient format could be used to raise initial ideas
and express initial input to the IETF community. Any document that
is intended to proceed through the formal editing and review
processes of the IETF, however, would need to be in the stricter
format (thereby facilitating debate and discussion using page
references).
To be clear, I do not think there is a need to reduce the substantive
requirements (e.g., IPR statement, security considerations, etc.) --
those can be included in a "lenient" template, and sometimes they (in
theory) increase the intellectual rigor of the document.
If there is interest in this idea, then I would want to see if we
could arrive at a lenient format that would be (a) easily producable
with standard word processing software (even if one has to, for
example, "print to file" using a generic printer driver), and (b)
would still be close enough to pure ASCII so that it would be easily
and correctly readable (and printable) with the full range of OS's
out there. Yes, I am aware that the I-D page offers a MS Word
template, but it is still a multistep process that might be able to
be simplified if the formating constraints were lower. And yes I
know that there are challenges due to the different line termination
rules on different OSs. So I admit that my two goals may not be
achievable, but is there value in trying?
John Morris
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John B. Morris, Jr.
Director, Internet Standards, Technology
& Policy Project
Center for Democracy and Technology
1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 637-9800
(202) 637-0968 fax
jmorris(_at_)cdt(_dot_)org
http://www.cdt.org
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