[MMUSIC] E.164 and visual separators in draft-ietf-mmusic-sdp-cs

[<[e-mail]>]

Hi Flemming, Paul, Keith, and all,

When going through http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-mmusic-sdp-cs-13.txt for publication, Flemming had a comment on the format of global telephone numbers.

The draft currently says in Section 5.2.1:

  This memo exclusively uses the international representation of E.164
   numbers, i.e., those initiated with a '+' sign.  The syntax (see
   Section 5.7) refers to the representation of a 'global-number'
   construction already specified in RFC 3966 [RFC3966].  This
   representation requires the presence of the '+' sign.  Additionally,
   this representation allows for the presence of one or more 'visual-
   separator' constructions.  Implementations confirming to this
   specification and using the "E164" address type together with the
   "PSTN" network type MUST only use international E.164, i.e., those
   starting with a '+' sign and SHOULD NOT use visual-separators.

This was discussed earlier on the list, see  http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/mmusic/current/msg09630.html

Flemming's comment was that referencing to RFC3966 but saying that the syntax is invalid because we only use parts of it is not a good idea.

The question is, could we just refer to RFC3966 and allow visual separators?

In my understanding the tradeoff is between slightly increased complexity in parser implementation versus being clear on the syntax. I would be inclined to prefer the latter.

Regards,
Simo