Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-precis-problem-statement-08.txt> (Stringprep Revision and PRECIS Problem Statement) to Informational RFC

[SM <[e-mail]>]

At 06:44 09-10-2012, The IESG wrote:
>The IESG has received a request from the Preparation and Comparison of
>Internationalized Strings WG (precis) to consider the following document:
>- 'Stringprep Revision and PRECIS Problem Statement'
>   <draft-ietf-precis-problem-statement-08.txt> as Informational RFC
>
>The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
>final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
>[e-mail] mailing lists by 2012-10-23. Exceptionally, comments may be

Section 2 could be dropped as it isn't that important to have RFC 
2119 in a problem statement.  In Section 4:

   "For example, Stringprep is based on and profiles may
    use NFKC [UAX15], while IDNA2008 mostly uses NFC [UAX15]."

I suggest reviewing the references to see what background information 
is required for the reader to understand "NFKC".

In Section 6:

   "The above suggests the following guidance for replacing Stringprep:
    o  A stringprep replacement should be defined."

That sounds obvious.

The appendix is more informative than the rest of the draft.  The 
text in the Appendix B comes out as rough notes though.

In Section 5.3.3.2:

   "It is important to identify the willingness of the protocol-using
    community to accept backwards-incompatible changes."

The "tolerance for change" for several "protocol-using communities" 
is rated as "not sure".  I understand that it is difficult to get 
definitive answers for these questions.  It's doubtful that people 
will choose "better support for different linguistic environments 
against the potential side effects of backward incompatibility".  It 
seems that the WG has taken on an intractable problem.

Regards,
-sm