Phillip,
I spent a large fraction of my professional life in pursuit of this
alluring and seemingly simple goal. Here's a small challenge: Take
*any* IETF protocol and write down the formal specification. Never
mind the proof of correctness; that can come later. (And with it an
extended discussion of the underlying logical system, the formal
system for representing the protocol specification, and the proof
system you have in mind for carrying out the proof.) Of course, the
formal specification will have to be readable and understandable to
the general population, and there will have to ready agreement that
it does embody the desired properties. Pick something simple.
Perhaps IP? Feel free to leave out messy details like performance
issues if you wish. Just something simple and instructive to make
your point. And in light of the other issues being discussed, don't
feel constrained to use ASCII. Use any notation and tools you like.
Steve
Steve Crocker
steve(_at_)shinkuro(_dot_)com
On Nov 17, 2005, at 10:09 AM, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
If we want to enforce simpler, more accurate design the best way to do
this would be to require a formal proof of correctness before
accepting
a specification.
Requiring people to use 1960s technology is not a way to achieve
simplicity.
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On
Behalf Of Masataka Ohta
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 8:30 AM
To: Yaakov Stein
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; Stewart Bryant
Subject: Re: Diagrams (Was RFCs should be distributed in XML)
Yaakov Stein wrote:
It's good that protocols needing more than 72 ASCII characters are
forbidden.
Just imagine what elegantly simple protocols we would have if we
required the descriptions to be in Morse code.
Good idea.
It's a better approach to enforce much simpler protocols.
Masataka Ohta
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