Re: [apps-discuss] WGLC on draft-ietf-appsawg-xdash-02.txt

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

On 1/27/12 11:41 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> On 1/27/12 11:40 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 1/27/2012 10:34 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>>> Proposed text is always appreciated.:)
>>>
>>> It's not clear to me what function the third sentence serves; we don't
>>> talk elsewhere about the misuse of parameters. With some editing, I
>>> suggest:
>>>
>>> Because textual names of parameters (e.g., "hash-type" and
>>> "x-hash-type") tend to appear in administrative and user interfaces much
>>> more often than numbers that identify parameters (e.g., 7 or 0xa007),
>>> this document discusses only parameters with textual names, not
>>> parameters that are expressed with numbers.
>>
>>
>> In fact I'm unclear about what problem the added text solves.  It seems
>> to focus on issues that are out of scope for the draft.
>>
>> At best, an aid to the reader to understand that scope seems sufficient,
>> along the lines of Paul's prefatory sentence:
>>
>>      The specification only cover parameter names, not numbers.
> 
> Brevity is good.

I suggest slightly modifying the second paragraph of the introduction:

   Although in theory the "X-" convention was a good way to avoid
   collisions (and attendant interoperability problems) between
   standard parameters and non-standard parameters, in practice the
   benefits have been outweighed by the costs associated with the
   leakage of non-standard parameters into the standards space.
   Therefore this document deprecates the "X-" convention for named
   parameters in application protocols and makes specific
   recommendations about how to proceed in a world without the
   distinction between standard and non-standard parameters.  Note that
   this document covers named parameters only, not numbers.

/psa