Context: The IETF Tools team works on requirements for various
automated tools for the IETF. Many of the tools have to deal with
internet-drafts; in these cases, the information whether an
internet-draft is a working group draft or a personal draft is
important. The mechanism by which such information is kept thus needs
to be known to the tools and, correspondingly, reflected in the
requirements.
There appear to be at least three conceivable ways of keeping the
information about internet-draft status:
1. Internet-draft name: working group internet-drafts are always named
"draft-ietf-*", while personal drafts do not match this pattern.
For a working group internet-draft, the third component of the file
name is the working group abbreviation. When a personal
internet-draft becomes a working group item, or when a working
group item is no longer one, or when an internet-draft changes the
working group, the internet-draft gets republished under a new
name, without exception. (This could be automated in a way that
would ensure that name history is consistently and reliably
captured.)
2. Metadata kept separately: the file name has nothing to do with the
status, which is kept separately. The file name is stable and
never changes (other than the version number). The working group
status is prominently indicated by all tools (in announcement
subject lines, etc.).
3. Current situation: technically, (2) (however, name stability isn't
enforced or actively encouraged). Informally, (1) for most working
groups. Many (most?) participants infer (1). Tools penalize
non-"draft-ietf-*" working group internet-drafts by making their
working group status less prominent.
For the purposes of specifying the requirements for tool development,
it is necessary to know which way to keep the information. It is
rather obvious that (1) and (2) are both vastly preferable to (3).
The choice between (1) and (2) is less clear.
Advantages of (1):
* simpler;
* matches existing expectations of most participants;
* makes working group status automatically prominent.
Advantages of (2):
* cleaner;
* allows tracking of document history better and easier.
It appears that the Tools team has a slight preference of (1) in favor
of (2) because of the existing convention (but (2) is perfectly
workable; it would simply require a bit of an education effort).
However, (3) appears so much inferior to either (1) or (2) that
proponents of (1) and (2) would both be reasonably expected to be
willing to compromise so that (3) is avoided.
With this in mind, we would like to raise the question: Which way of
keeping the status should the Tools team use in the requirements for
the tools it is specifying?
--
Stanislav Shalunov http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/
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