Re: Possible BofF question -- I18n (was: Re: Possible OBF question -- I18n)

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

On 6/1/18 2:16 PM, Spencer Dawkins at IETF wrote:
> I'm confused about something here.
> 
> On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 1:33 PM Nico Williams <[e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
>     On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 11:42 AM Peter Saint-Andre
>     <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
>         On 6/1/18 10:27 AM, John R Levine wrote:
>         > On Fri, 1 Jun 2018, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>         >>> Require that documents have I18N Considerations sections,
>         require review
>         >>> by an I18N directorate, and you'll see how quickly
>         participants who used
>         >>> to not give a damn about I18 will come around, learn what
>         they have to,
>         >>> and get their I18N work done.  Suddenly the I18N directorate
>         will be in
>         >>> demand.
>         >>
>         >> This is worth considering...
>         >
>         > I don't think it's a very good idea.  It'll just lead to useless
>         > pro-forma language.
> 
>         Quite possibly.
> 
> 
>     We have the IESG and directorates to make sure these sections are
>     not pro forma.
> 
> 
> I'm not seeing an obvious directorate that would review docs for i18n
> considerations at https://datatracker.ietf.org/dir/. 
> 
> To be fair, that's the list of active directorates, but searching for
> "ietf internationalization directorate review" didn't turn up an obvious
> closed directory.
> 
> What I do know, is that the IAB had an Internationalization program, but
> that concluded in March 2017, and IAB programs don't have any particular
> role in document approval beyond program members (who may or may not be
> IAB members) responding to Last Call announcements as individuals.
> Details
> at https://www.iab.org/activities/programs/concluded-programs/internationalization-program/.
> 
> Transport guys don't internationalize a lot, because most of our headers
> aren't intended for human consumption, and it's very possible that I'm
> missing something - so, I'm just trying to stay synchronized with this
> important conversation.

AFAIK we've never had an i18n directorate. Some ADs (Alexey is great at
this) flag documents in IETF LC or IESG review that could use i18n help.
Sometimes the authors reach out and ask for early review / assistance,
either on their own or prodded by a WG chair or AD (this happens for
many things outside of i18n, of course). Formalizing this has potential
to improve outcomes without necessarily requiring an
Internationalization Considerations section in every RFC (although IMHO
we could include that during the I-D phase and remove it if there's
nothing actionable, as we do for IANA considerations). However, as you
note, there are plenty of protocols that don't include human-readable
text so the i18n considerations would be a no-op.

Peter