Re: [apps-discuss] I-D Action: draft-ietf-appsawg-rfc3536bis-00.txt

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

>>> I think this definition is not correct.  "A way that humans interact" is
>>> too generalized.  I suppose the following definition would suit better here.
...
>> Your definition is too limiting. Clearly, we are not only talking about
>> speech.
>
> Agreed; but the current isn't appropriate as well.  Considering a language
> being the humans interaction way is correct in its concept, but I think we
> should think about more exact definition.

I don't.  I think the text is fine as it is, and we should stop
pushing on this point and leave it alone.  [The only change I can see
supporting is inserting "verbal" before "way".  But there are
non-verbal languages, as well.]

>>> I think we can clarify a bit this definition by mentioning: "The
>>> semantics of control characters depend on the application they are used
>>> with.  The most common control characters semantics are specified in ISO/IEC
>>> 6429:1992 [ISO6429]" and adding the appropriate reference to ISO 6429, like
>>> this: "ISO/IEC, "ISO/IEC 6429:1992. Information technology -- Control
>>> functions for coded character sets",1992."
>>
>> This seems like overkill. We don't define the semantics of any other code
>> points; why do it for control characters?
>
> I proposed to add at least some phrase on the role of control characters.
>  ISO/IEC 6429 suits for this purpose fine, I think.

I'm ambivalent here.  On the one hand, I think the text is sufficient
as it is, and that we should move on.  On the other hand, with a whole
generation brought up with SmartPhones, I think fewer people
understand what control characters were -- WHY this set of codepoints
is special.  A bit of history wouldn't be a bad thing, if not strictly
necessary.

In any case, I don't support using ISO 6429 for it.  A few words of
background here would be enough, IF we want to put them in.  Pointing
to an 80-page, 150-euro document doesn't cut it for me.

>>> I also think the reference to [CHARMOD] is a bit incorrect as well.  I
>>> propose:
>>>
>>>> Duerst, M., Ed., Yergeau, F., Ed., Ishida, R., Ed., Wolf, M., Ed. and T.
>>>> Texin, Ed., "Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0", W3C
>>>> Recommendation, February 2005.<http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod/>
>>
>> Disagree. Listing a bunch of folks does not help the reference at all.
>
> You could then mention "Duerst, M., et al, ...".  See, we're not mentioning
> IETF as an author of RFCs; the same is with W3C.

Paul's been consistent in using the organization as the author for all
non-IETF documents -- there's another W3C citation, many from Unicode,
a couple from ISO (ugh), and so on.  That seems the right thing to do
here, too.  He does have a note in asking the RFC Editor to normalize
the citations, and I think we should leave this issue to the RFC
Editor and their style guide.

Barry, as participant