RE: is manual keying mandatory

[[e-mail] (Bede McCall)]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't understand the reason for
such dogged insistence on eliminating manual keying as a "MUST" at
this late date.  The specs don't mandate that manual keying be the
only kind of keying, and it's a given that manual keying won't scale
(a scalable manual keying implementation never having been part of the
mandate in any case :-).

Given that manual keying is perhaps the simplest and first part of the
specs to be implemented by most companies, I can't imagine how it
could require any extra effort to code or support in fielded products.
You'll undoubtedly want to discourage its use in fielded products
outside of a small number of cases (e.g., for debugging or very small
collections of hosts) which reduces your product support obligation
for manual keying to a little extra ink on paper --- if even that
much, assuming your documentation is online.

Lastly, merely stating that there is a cogent case for not requiring
such a basic feature is a far cry from presenting a cogent case ---
and in any event this case, cogent or otherwise, should have been
presented long ago.  At this point, this issue with manual keying is
just a red herring.

-- 
  Bede McCall   <[e-mail]>
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