Subject: Re: [dispatch] [Sedate] WG Review: Serialising Extended Data About Times and Events (sedate)

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2021 11:19:55 -0400

FWIW, I completely agree with Ned, especially wrt the issues of
the confusion and potential interoperability issues associated
with creating inconsistent standards and terminology.   To
further complicate things, RFC 3339 is based on on the 1988
version (or perhaps, given an additional reference that is not
cited, the 2000 one) of ISO 9601.   There is now a 2019 version
of ISO 8601, with the scope of the 1988 version extended and
split into two parts, the second specifically concerned with
extensions.  Any charter that proposes to tinker with RFC 3339,
potentially even including incorporating it by reference as Ned
suggests should have, as its first charter item, a careful
review of the current version of ISO 8601-1 and 8601-2 to
understand if, or how, they might affect the rest of the effort.
Failure to do so could lead us to three inconsistent ways of
doing things, not just two (which is one too many).

   john

--On Tuesday, June 1, 2021 09:43 -0700 [email-masked]
wrote:

> I have to object to a working being chartered with this remit.
> 
> The main problem is that the charter specifies that a variant
> of RFC 3339 is to be embedded in this new specification, with
> no consideration given to the alternate approach of
> incorporating either RFC 3339 or an RFC 3339bis by reference.
> 
> This really isn't the time or place to get into all of the
> reasons why incorporation by reference is a much better way to
> do this, so I'll simply note that even if you ignore the
> confusion this can cause, having text in two places that
> describes the same thing has proved to be a maintenance
> nightmare on many previous occasions.
> 
> At an absolute minimum the choice of reference versus
> embedding should be left to the working group, rather than
> being effectively chosen by the charter, and this needs to be
> made very clear from the outset.
> 
> The charter also says that:
> 
>>     It is anticipated that this document would be a companion
>>     to RFC3339 rather than a replacement, embedding an
>>     unaltered RFC3339 instant along with the contextual data.
> 
> Except the current draft cited as a "good basis" for this work
> doesn't actually do this. Rather, it preemptively extends RFC
> 3339 in not one but two ways:
> 
> (1) Years are extended to six digits
> (2) Local offsets are extended to allow seconds and fractions
> of seconds.
> 
> Given the ability of the metadata (what the draft calls the
> "informative suffix") to specify complex time zone rules, I
> question the need for (2), but again, this is neither the time
> nor the place to get into these sorts of details. The point is
> that this isn't "an unaltered RFC3339", and if this work were
> to end up specifying this new format but not updating RFC
> 3339, we will then have have two incompatible formats for
> basic timestamps.
> 
> Another problem is that the current draft makes a number of
> unnecessary changes to the RFC 3339 ABNF, e.g., full-time
> becomes time-full, full-date becomes date-full, date-fullyear
> becomes date-year, etc. Even granting that the new names are
> in some sense "better", the problem is that other
> specifications can and do reference specific rules in
> specifications like RFC 3339, and when you change the the rule
> names, you complicate the update process for all of these RFCs.
> 
> Finally, I concur with Carsten Bormann's point about noting
> that this is exclusively a *text* format for date time values.
> Simply inserting the word "text" in a couple of places would
> sufficient. And FWIW, I don't think extending the current
> charter to cover binary formats is a good idea. If such a
> thing is to be done, it should be accomplished via a recharter.
> 
> 				Ned
> 
> 
>> Hi all,
> 
>> (CC dispatch for information)
> 
>> The charter for the Sedate working group has passed the first
>> phase and is now in external review. Additionally, the sedate
>> mailing list has been created. Do go over there and subscribe
>> if you are interested.
> 
>> Now is the time to let the IESG know of any comment you might
>> have on the charter text.
> 
>> I am also looking for volunteers to chair the wg. It is ok to
>> volunteer someone you think would be a good fit. I hope that,
>> given the interest in this work, we will not have problems
>> finding chairs, but as a reminder: please do consider
>> volunteering if you support this work, as with no chairs
>> there will be no working group.
> 
>> Please reply to this thread (dropping the dispatch mailing
>> list), or send an email to the IESG ([email-masked]), or
>> directly to me with any comments on the charter, or
>> volunteering as chair.
> 
>> Thanks,
>> Francesca
> 
>> On 01/06/2021, 16:0䨳㸀㸀 ࠀ