Re: [secdir] SECDIR review of draft-melnikov-sasl-scram-ldap-03

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Chris Lonvick <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I'd also recommend that you revise the abstract a bit for clarity.
> CURRENT:
>   This memo describes how authPassword LDAP attribute can be used for
>   storing secrets used by Salted Challenge Response (SCRAM) Simple
>   Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) Mechanism.
> SUGGESTED:
>   This memo describes how the LDAP attribute of authPassword can be used
>   for storing secrets used by the Salted Challenge Response (SCRAM)
>   mechanism in the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)
>   framework.

I agree that strings of attributive nouns and noun-phrases can be
confusing, especially when they're long and also shown as acronyms.  I
think the second half of your suggested change is good.  But I think
the first half actually makes it worse, by making it look like there's
some attribute of authPassword that's called "LDAP".  The best way to
clarify that part is just to put the attribute name in quotes:
SUGGESTED++:
  This memo describes how the "authPassword" LDAP attribute can be used
  for storing secrets used by the Salted Challenge Response (SCRAM)
  mechanism in the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)
  framework.

Barry