Re: [apps-discuss] [Editorial Errata Reported] RFC6365 (2966)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

RFC Editor and relevant IESG members: 

<rant>As a general observation, given that we do not change RFCs
once published and, especially for IETF Stream RFCs, that there
are extensive opportunities to suggest small corrections during
pre-approval review (and even post-approval if a problem is
noticed after the approval notice but before actual
publication), I believe the errata process would be considerably
improved by imposing a non-trivial administrative fee for a
filing, especially a filing within a few weeks of RFC
publication.  That fee would appropriately be doubled if the
person making the filing were on the mailing list of a WG that
considered the document  and doubled again if the proposed
change were either incorrect or specious.

I believe that, if half of the fee went to the RFC Editor Staff
Annual Party Fund and the other half were split among relevant
ADs, WG Chairs, and authors, it would considerably improve the
errata review process as well as providing a small barrier to
use of the errata as either DoS attacks or general annoyances.
Having the fee would provide those who read documents looking
for errors significant encouragement to read the I-Ds and
identify issues while they can still be fixed rather than doing
post-publication nit-picking on RFCs.

If nothing else, it would be useful if categories like
"rejected" and "accepted" could be supplemented with "probably
technically correct, but a massive waste of time".
</rant>

Now, as to substance, it is first worth remembering that,
whatever the writing system is called, the name in Latin-derived
characters is a transcription for an Austronesian language that
has apparently been written with Indic/Brahmi-derived characters
as well as Arabic and Latin ones. Such transcriptions and
transliterations are rarely as precise as one might like,
especially when one of the scripts through which a term migrates
is written without explicit vowel notation.  While "Jawi" is,
indeed, usually preferred, we've been informed by Malaysian
sources that "Jawa" is often used interchangeably.   Probably
the text in RFC 6365 should have read "Jawi, sometimes referred
to as Jawa" or equivalent, a change that would have been
trivially made had the issue been identified prior to
publication (see above).

Neither the Unicode script categories nor ISO 15924 are of use
here because they consider Jawi to be simply Arabic Script.
Whether it is or is not is a matter of judgment but then so is
the question of whether the Arabic script as used to write the
Arabic language and the various forms known as Perso-Arabic are
really the same script or are, like e.g., Greek and Cyrillic,
actually a single script with some variant and additional
letter-glyphs and phonemes.  The use of the term
"Arabic-script-based" in the text was intended to point that
out, so "...script (actually a variant of the arabic one)" in
the errata does not add any information.

regards,
   john


--On Saturday, September 10, 2011 01:34 -0700 RFC Errata System
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> The following errata report has been submitted for RFC6365,
> "Terminology Used in Internationalization in the IETF".
> 
> --------------------------------------
> You may review the report below and at:
> http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=6365&eid=2966
> 
> --------------------------------------
> Type: Editorial
> Reported by: St?phane Bortzmeyer <[e-mail]>
> 
> Section: 2
> 
> Original Text
> -------------
> Malay is primarily written in
> 
>       Latin script today, but the earlier,
> Arabic-script-based, Jawa
> 
>       form is still in use
> 
> Corrected Text
> --------------
> Malay is primarily written in
> 
>       Latin script today, but the earlier,
> Arabic-script-based, Jawi
> 
>       form is still in use
> 
> Notes
> -----
> I don't know this script myself but it seems that, in english,
> it is always called Jawi (Jawa is the old name for the island
> it came from, so Jawi = script from Jawa).
> 
> 
> 
> This script (actually a variant of the arabic one) does not
> seem to be in ISO 15924 so I cannot offer an authoritative
> reference.
> 
> Instructions:
> -------------
> This errata is currently posted as "Reported". If necessary,
> please use "Reply All" to discuss whether it should be
> verified or rejected. When a decision is reached, the
> verifying party (IESG) can log in to change the status and
> edit the report, if necessary. 
> 
> --------------------------------------
> RFC6365 (draft-ietf-appsawg-rfc3536bis-06)
> --------------------------------------
> Title               : Terminology Used in Internationalization
> in the IETF Publication Date    : September 2011
> Author(s)           : P. Hoffman, J. Klensin
> Category            : BEST CURRENT PRACTICE
> Source              : Applications Area Working Group
> Area                : Applications
> Stream              : IETF
> Verifying Party     : IESG