Re: Last Call: 'Definitions of Managed Objects for Remote Ping, Traceroute, and Lookup Operations' to Proposed Standard

[Elwyn Davies <elwynd at dial.pipex.com>]

Bill Strahm wrote:
> Robert Elz wrote:
> > I cannot see why there's a debate going on here.   If someone, anyone,
> > can read a spec, and, in good faith, point out a possible ambiguity in
> > the text, before the doc is finalised, and if fixing it to avoid the 
> > problem is easy, what possible justification can there be for not 
> > adding a few
> > words to clarify things, and make sure that confusion does not happen?
> >
> > Whenever someone points out a problem like this, the response should be
> > something like "OK, if we write it like ... does that make it clear?" or
> > perhaps "What would you suggest as clearer wording?" but never "It is
> > clear enough as it is" as the latter is already demonstrated to be 
> > false.
> My mother can't read internet drafts either.  Should we change our 
> language so that my mother can read and comprehend them.
>
> It is assumed that there is a baseline knowledge when we write 
> drafts... If you don't know how MIBs work in general - there are a LOT 
> of problems that you have to sort out before you can provide technical 
> feedback to the community.  Someone who is practiced in the art of 
> reading/writting/implementing MIBs isn't going to have a problem with 
> strictly monotonically increasing Indexes - knowing what that means, 
> and how to implement it and test the implementation for correctness.
>
> Somone who has been watching a rant on the list recently invovling the 
> work monotonically increasing, MIGHT see the word and get confused.  I 
> am not to worried about that - the document really isn't for their 
> eyes anyway (I'm not about to comment on various security drafts 
> either - should they be simplified so I can understand them, I hope I 
> am expected to put in the work so that I understand them instead)
There is a fine line between endeavouring to make drafts and RFCs 
comprehensible to the casual, but technically competent, reader and 
requiring them to spell out every last convention and piece of 'common 
knowledge'.  The problem, in my experience as a gen-art reviewer, is 
that most drafts are created and reviewed by what are essentially closed 
communities (smaller than the total IETF and certainly smaller than the 
technical community that might expect to read these documents).  These 
communities share a common set of assumptions and 'jargon'.  This 
occasionally (well actually, quite frequently) results in pieces of text 
which may well be clear to those immersed in the particular art today, 
but that are less than clear to somebody with a reasonable grounding but 
not an intimate knowledge of the subject (such as MIBs) (i.e, me in the 
first instance, and, hopefully, lots of new implementors over the next 
few years).

On the other hand, I would expect the audience to be literate and use a 
dictionary if a word is unfamiliar (as it might be given that not all 
our readers have English as a first language or mathematical training).  
So I am quite happy if a precise word which I can find in the dictionary 
is used correctly.  Or alternatively there is an upfront pointer to a 
clear definition of the term.

Authors should be expecting that their works will be read by people who 
need to get the background right as well as those actually studying 
every line, so it is best to use clear and unambiguous language if at 
all possible:  accordingly I agree wholeheartedly with the next comment...
> > Certainly it is possible to explain the wording on the list, and 
> > convince
> > the objector that very careful understanding of the context makes the
> > intent clear - but that does nothing for the next person who comes along
> > and makes the same interpretation "mistake" (perhaps without even
> > realising the possibility for ambiguity, but simply interpreting the 
> > text
> > a different way).
For the record, although there is some discussion about monotonic vs 
strictly monotonic, all the cases which I looked at appeared to be used 
(mathematically and linguistically) correctly and unambiguously, given 
the surrounding words (since strictly monotonic sequences are also 
monotonic).  In cases where timestamps are involved it has to be 
monotonic anyway since we don't have clocks with infinitesimal 
resolution or arbitrarily large numbers of bits to represent timestamps.

Regards,
Elwyn
> >
>
> Bill
>
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