Comments on latest IAFA draft

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Hi!

I've just discovered that I'd somehow been dropped off the iafa mailing
list around the start of the year - and that there had been some revisions
of the internet draft since then. (Only some of which had been announced -
and therefore I'd seen.) Having caught up with the old iafa mail (nearly
2Mbytes as it's one monolithic file) and read the latest drafts (Sept.) - I
have a few comments, but first a general note.

Template "designers" are supposed to pick and choose from the attributes
listed in the iafa docs. Some attempt has been made to include examples of
"Service Templates" etc. There has been no suggestion about registering
template types. Is this something that should be considered? I can imagine
lots of different templates being produced for different objects: network
training materials, NIR tools, NIR groups (those three have already been
done), NICs, etc etc. Perhaps it doesn't matter - but I'm just worried that
this might get into the same mess as with the X.500 schema - where there
were different schema for K-12 folk than for, say, NIC personnel. This
meant that a different set of info was kept for different "resources" -
which made searching by attribute across groups difficult. (Does that make
sense? ) Having said that - registration of template types poses other
problems.

Comments on the Sept. IAFA  draft:

o       I agree that there needs to be a way to insert comments. This is
for several reasons:

        - to make the template more readable for the person completing it
(who may not be completing it via a forms interface). (In the examples  in
the iafa doc - blank lines are added to improve readability.)

        - to enable template "designers" to include notes on how to
complete the template

        - to allow template/index maintainers to include reminders to themselves

o       A few of the typos:

        - 2.1 "...... and should be used *in* preference to the complete
entry."".... to ensure *uniqueness*..."

        - 2.2.1 - Name of organisation .... under *whose* authority....

        - 2.2.3 *Date* record was last maintained

        - 2.4.1 The service can offer an overall description of each *of*
the various Internet services......

        - 3.1 "[phone]"  Note that later in the doc. the format
without brackets is specified for phone numbers.


o       3.3 item 7) Blank is defined as octal 40 - fine (that's the way I
think of it) but the URI docs etc tend to talk in hex

o       3.3 item 10) I still think "latitude and longitude" is a bit
pretentious.

o       3.6.2   Not sure why we need organisation-postal *and*
organisation-city, -state, -country.

o       Examples:

        Sally suggested that names be "Lastname, first names". If this is
agreed - the examples would need changing.

That's it for now. Nice work Martijn, Alan and Markus.

-- Jill