Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-6man-uri-zoneid-05

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 28/11/2012 00:14, Radia Perlman wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 6:50 AM, Brian E Carpenter <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> On 23/11/2012 14:26, Barry Leiba wrote:
>>>> The WG reached consensus on a SHOULD-based version. The whole issue
>>>> of browser behaviour is contentious, so changing to MUST would be
>>>> a WG issue, above my pay grade as a document editor. I will wait
>>>> for instructions.
>>>>
>>> Could you
>>>
>>> 1: give us some background on the discussion that resulted in SHOULD
>>> instead of MUST, and
>> I don't recall it being explicitly discussed - what I meant is that
>> this is the text that got through WG last call and post-last-call
>> discussion, without dissent.
>>
> 
> Often, in my observation, lack of discussion doesn't necessarily mean
> people are happy with the idea.  It often (usually?) means they haven't
> read it.
> 
> I think it would be good to have an explicit discussion in the WG, not on
> the entire draft, but on specifically, whether the syntax should be
> standardized so that the same syntax works the same on all implementations,
> or whether there is some reason why it's important for implementers to have
> flexibility in how they interpret the string, and it's not so important
> that URIs work differently with different implementations.  I'd be more
> convinced that people want it this way if there was discussion on the
> mailing list, focusing people exactly on this issue.  (and I'm also curious
> about why the flexibility is important).

I honestly think that discussing that in 6man is pointless. The issue is
the one I already raised on the IETF list: the user input box on a browser
is one thing, the URI on the wire is another, and in between there is
a heuristic. I don't see what a single IETF WG can do about this other
than bemoaning it, because each browser implementer comes up with their
own heuristic. (I certainly didn't realise how annoying this is before
working on this draft.)

   Brian

> 
> Radia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>> 2: consider adding explanations of when it would be appropriate to not
>> do a
>>> SHOULD?
>> Yes, this is one of the things I look for when reviewing documents, too ;-)
>>
>>> For 2, above, there's a great difference between "SHOULD do x unless
>>> there's some reason that it's impossible in this implementation" and
>>> "SHOULD do x unless you don't happen to agree with it."  I'd like to try
>> to
>>> tease those apart.
>> I'm not a browser implementor, but as far as I can tell, there is a strong
>> tendency in that community to respect the law of least user astonishment,
>> so my very personal interpretation is "you SHOULD do this unless experience
>> shows that it will confuse the user." However, I think the real
>> interpretation
>> in this case is closer to your first one - do this, because it helps the
>> user, unless your implementation makes this unreasonable.
>>
>> Very much IMHO.
>>
>>     Brian
>>
>