Re: Summary: What to do with expired signatures

[Robert Elz <[e-mail]>]

    Date:        Sat, 16 Feb 2002 12:10:33 -0600
    From:        "Eric A. Hall" <[e-mail]>
    Message-ID:  <[e-mail]>

  | "Paul V. Mockapetris" wrote:
  | 
  | > So a better way to decide this is just to have the argument about
  | > whether a text format for zone data is still useful or not, rather than
  | > whether it is possible.

It isn't whether the text format is useful, it is whether standardising it
is the right thing to do which is the issue.   I don't think I'd survive
with anything that didn't keep data in text file format, I like to be able
to use all the standard tools (grep, ...) on the data (and that includes
secondary data).   But I don't care in the slightest if my files look much
like your files, or anyone else's.  Nor do I mind that there are others for
whom text file format is an ancient anachronism from the dinosaur era, and
who have no need for anything like that.

I do appreciate that in the early days having the implementations use a
common format was useful - it allowed exchange of data when AXFR wasn't
all that reliable.  These days, it makes no sense.

[Aside: if interop testing was done with (early) BIND's text file format,
and others, then it must have been pretty pathetic testing, BIND's parser
for the text file was only occasionally related to what the RFC specifies,
the variations were almost as common as the compliances].

  | There is plenty of precedent for having a
  | data-format specification supplementing a protocol specification (see
  | [2]822, HTML, etc) so this wouldn't be unheard of.

Bad analogy.   Those specify the format of data that is interchanged between
two systems.   So does the DNS, but it isn't the text file format.   The
equivalent analogy for e-mail would be mailbox format, and that's something
that certainly isn't standardised (though there are some common formats).
The arguments for standardising it are exactly the same as those in favour
of standardising the DNS text file format (once we accept that AXFR now works)
but they're not nearly good enough to win.

kre


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