Re: Genart last call review of draft-ietf-httpbis-binary-message-04

[Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>]

Hey David,

I blame laziness for not trying this earlier, but once I tried out something *like* your suggestion I found I was pleased.

https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/pull/2127

It might not be as much of a change as you imagined, but I think that a small change like this does improve comprehension somewhat.

Thanks,
Martin

On Tue, May 24, 2022, at 23:59, David Schinazi via Datatracker wrote:
> Reviewer: David Schinazi
> Review result: Ready with Issues
>
> I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft. The General Area
> Review Team (Gen-ART) reviews all IETF documents being processed
> by the IESG for the IETF Chair.  Please treat these comments just
> like any other last call comments.
> For more information, please see the FAQ at
> <https://trac.ietf.org/trac/gen/wiki/GenArtfaq>.
>
> Document: draft-ietf-httpbis-binary-message-04
> Reviewer: David Schinazi
> Review Date: 2022-05-24
> IETF LC End Date: 2022-06-03
> IESG Telechat date: Not scheduled for a telechat
>
> Summary: Well written concise draft, apart from section 3 - see below.
>
> Major issues: None
>
> Minor issues: While this is an editorial comment, I'm raising it as a minor
> issue because it significantly hampers comprehension in my mind. I find Section
> 3 incredibly hard to reason about. In order to get to the actual format, the
> reader is forced to repeatedly jump forward and backwards using a notepad to
> track state. The draft seems somewhat akin to a game like Myst if you'll pardon
> the analogy. I believe that this could be resolved by the editors without too
> much work by doing the following: - keep the preface to Section 3 as-is, it
> does a great job of introducing the concepts - split up the "Message with
> Known-Length" diagram into two diagrams, one for known-length request and one
> for known-length response - similarly split up "Indeterminate-Length Message"
> diagram - reorder diagrams to avoid forward references, for example
> "Known-Length Field Section" should appear before "Message with Known-Length"
> since the latter relies on the former - define every field using a separate
> bullet following the style from RFC 9000. Currently the draft uses the
> notational conventions from RFC 9000 albeit incorrectly, for example
> "Known-Length Informational Response" does not appear in all "Message with
> Known-Length" structs but the square brackets indicating optionality are
> missing.
>
> While this is fundamentally an editorial issue that is theoretically the
> purview of the editors, such readability difficulties are worth discussing by
> the GEN Area Director if they agree with this assessment.
>
> Nits/editorial comments: None