6MAN WG Last Call: draft-ietf-6man-uri-zoneid-00.txt

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

Howdy,

Jumping a bit late on this, my apologies.  I've tried to keep the
attributions below, but if I got them wrong, please correct them.
My own text is prefaced with <th>

Brian Carpenter wrote:
>Bill Fenner wrote:
>
> Previous joint work between the ipv6 working group and the W3C URI

<th>Just as a side note, the URI mailing list is hosted by the W3C, but the
working group was an IETF working group and that list is still used by the IETF
and W3C jointly for discussions in this area.

> working group resulted in a decision that did not change the ABNF at
> all, in 2 ways:
>
> 1. It used the IPvFuture extension mechanism;

Hmm. I'm not sure that was a good choice. It certainly doesn't
seem natural to me. Also it seems like more work for implementors
than a small extension to the existing ABNF. What's so sacred?
<th>
This actually doesn't turn out to be a small change.  The draft gives
this production

 IPv6addrz = IPv6address [ "%" ZoneID ]

but the use of a "%" that is not used in escaping is contrary to the basic URI
syntax--this is made clear in Section 2.4 of RFC 3986; changing that would
require a major re-write to URI parsers.


> 2. It used a non-percent character for the separator.

Yes, and I have almost convinced myself that is better. The % is
certainly the worst possible choice from a clarity viewpoint.

> At the time, the URI working group was very concerned about the change
> in the ABNF and the use of percent where percent had not previously
> been allowed.  Have they changed their position here, or have they not
> had a chance to comment on this change yet?

It's been sent for URI review but no reply so far.

<th>
I'm on the relevant list ([e-mail]) and I have not seen this document
there.  Can you resend the request for review?

>
> This work was accepted as an ipv6 wg work item around IETF63 (Paris,
> 2005), but the authors never pushed the document forward due to a lack
> of interest in the broader community.  The draft that was adopted by
> the wg was
>
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-fenner-literal-zone-01

Recently there's been definite interest in this as an operational
convenience. I was pretty much unaware of the 2005 work, since that was
just when I joined the IESG and life was too busy, especially
during the first Paris IETF.

Was there a real reason that you went for this?
  IPv6zone-id = 1*( unreserved / sub-delims / ":" )

We have
  ZoneID = 1*( unreserved / pct-encoded )
which allows anything, having noted that some operating systems use all
sorts of characters in interface names.

<th> If there is a fundamental change in the limitations which are set out in
Bill's draft's section 3, it would be useful to set them out.  As it stands,
I haven't seen any changes that would cause a change, but this would be
useful to describe them if they have happened.

regards,

Ted Hardie