Re: [Rswg] Snapshots versus normative specificatoins

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Brian, 

Thanks.  The particular thing that stimulated my note was
back-and-forth in the meeting as to whether the IAB should
publish "the document" now or whether it should be in the
editorial stream and hence needed to go through the RSWG/RSAB
process.  I realized when the call was already overtime that
different people were making different assumptions about what
"the document" was about and, in particular, whether is was a
descriptive snapshot or something normative enough that we would
point non-IETF-tools implementation at it and say "conform to
this" (or "this is the standard with which you need to
interoperate".  I have different answers depending on what is
intended and suspected others do too. Quick comments on your
comments below...

--On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 09:49 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> The time zone means that I'm sitting out this week, but some
> comments below:
> 
> On 26-Jul-22 08:56, John C Klensin wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>>> From what I could tell from this distance, people were saying
>> things but not quite communicating with each other.  In case
>> it might help, let me see if I can reformulate the problem.
>> As a user of the xm2lrfc v3 vocabulary and one of the tools
>> that compiles documents supposedly written in it, I have
>> three places to look for a definition of that vocabulary:
>> 
>> 	RFC 7991
>>    draft-iab-rfc7991bis-04
>> and
>>    https://xml2rfc.tools.ietf.org/xml2rfc-doc.html
> 
> We certainly need to decide which of the second two "counts",
> but as my issues list asserts:
> 
> "(8) Format evolution.
> 
> The policy question is to decide who is in charge of format
> evolution. Who debates and who decides? The technical
> details (e.g. XML2RFC fixes, SVG usability) don't belong
> in the RSWG, so where do they belong?"

I think there may be a further distinction there.  The right
answer for technical fixes (including usability improvements)
_within_ the boundaries set by specifications such as the
vocabulary ones may be different from the answer if we are going
to change those boundary  specifications (including modifying
the vocabulary).  I think the latter needs for more careful
community scrutiny if only for reasons of user-facing stability
and the stability needed to claim our XML documents can be
treated as "archival".

> In my mind the questions for the RSWG are: Where is the
> authority
> on this? Where is the debating chamber for the technical
> details?
> Who calls consensus?

Agreed on all of the above, but with the understanding that I
the "fix to make things conform" or "fix to make tools work" or
even "adjust particular output formats"  questions may have
different answers from, e.g., "change the vocabulary" ones.

> John's remarks and questions below are all on the mark, IMHO,
> but my questions remain open.

thanks.  And agreed

    john