Re: [urn] document length and redundancy -- draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn-21: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

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

Because there have been a few comments on the length of this
document and internal redundancy, an explicit tradeoff may be
worth a brief comment.

While the document contains a good deal of theoretical and
contextual material that the WG concluded was important, we (the
editors and, I believe, the WG) also concluded that many readers
who were trying to understand what was involved in registering a
namespace and the procedure to be followed would read it looking
for that information.  There are, in essence, three separate
procedures.  They use reflecting different cases but depend on
the same template.  

We decided to make each case and procedure as self-contained as
possible for easy reading (or even skimming/ checking) but
someone trying to work out a registration.  Because the
procedures are still similar, that resulted in considerable
redundancy.   The other alternative would have been to try to
define a single procedure with lots of alternate cases and/or a
web of cross-references.  That would have created a much shorter
document but one that would have been harder to use and that
might have increased the odds of errors or omissions.

Speaking personally, I hope the IESG doesn't feel a need to
second-guess that set of document organization decisions.

    john