[urn] Alissa Cooper's Discuss on draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn-21: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

[Alissa Cooper <[e-mail]>]

Alissa Cooper has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn-21: Discuss

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DISCUSS:
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What is the motivation behind specifying the r-component syntax at this
point and then recommending against its use until further standardization
is complete? Why not specify the syntax when those future standards get
written? The current approach just seems like an invitation for people to
start including r-components in URNs without independent implementations
understanding their semantics.


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COMMENT:
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= General =

I agree with Stephen that this spec seems unnecessarily long. There are a
bunch of instances of repeated text in different sections that reference
each other. I realize this doc was a negotiated outcome but if doing a
streamlining pass is a possibility, it wouldn't hurt IMO.

= Section 4.4 =

"Further, all URN-aware applications MUST
   offer the option of displaying URNs in this canonical form to allow
   for direct transcription (for example by copy-and-paste
techniques)."

I know this was in 2141, but it seems needlessly constraining on
applications and I would be surprised if every application that is aware
of URNs actually does this. 

In general I think it would be preferable to avoid specifying normative
requirements about what applications are to display, including the other
requirements added to this section that were not in 2141.

= Section 8 =

Agree with Stephen's comment here.

= Appendix C =

"Truly experimental usages MAY, of course, employ
       the 'example' namespace [RFC6963]."

It seems inappropriate to have normative language in this appendix.