[art] Re: [Last-Call] Re: [SPICE] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: draft-ietf-spice-glue-id-04 ietf last call Artart review

[Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2026, at 04:22, John C Klensin wrote:
> Observation: This discussion seems to me to be increasingly turning
> into a discussion of possible sets of rules, drawing on analogies
> that may or may not be useful, and forcing some of us into a sort of
> backwards tutorial on some fairly fundamental i18n issues.  Can we
> get it off the Last Call and ART lists, return the problem and
> questions to the WG, and get the thrashing off of those two lists
> until the WG has had some serious discussions, reached its
> conclusions, and generated and agreed to a new I-D?

As SPICE chair, I'm glad to see engagement on this topic, but I do agree that it has drifted a little off-course.  Though being that this is on multiple lists and this is (I think) on-topic for art@.

In the midst of all this back-and-forth, the authors proposed something very concrete and actionable.  That is, limiting to a narrow subset of allowed characters ([0-9a-zA-Z][0-9a-zA-Z+\.-]{,n}, for n=50,999 concretely). That is what is now in the -05 version of the draft.

If there are substantive concerns with that suggested outcome, please focus on that in follow-up emails (at least to the spice@ list; people who have more to say on general issues regarding identifier design might start separate threads on art@, I guess).

For SPICE at least, some of the discussion here raised concerns about whether a restrictive character set is the right long-term decision. That some future user of this might have a need for more than what is on offer.  As John notes, we're probably at the limits of what we can extract in terms of value from that discussion for GLUE specifically, but if there are concrete actions people want, that sort of input is welcome.

That is, please be specific, concrete, and focus on the changes you would like to see to draft if you want to continue discussion on spice@.

In any case, this work is now with our AD, who I trust will make the right call about next steps.