Subject: [Ltru] Last Call: 'Matching of Language Tags' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-ltru-matching)

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:40:21 +0900

These are my comments on draft-ietf-ltru-matching-14.txt,
currently in IETF Last Call:

All of these comments are purely editorial, but should
increase the quality of the document.

First comment: Improve the reference to XML:
draft-ietf-ltru-matching-14.txt currently has:

  [W3C.REC-xml-20040204]
              Yergeau, F., Paoli, J., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Bray, T.,
              and E. Maler, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third
              Edition)", W3C REC REC-xml-20040204, February 2004.

This is in no way appropriate, because the order of the authors
is jumbled due to the fact that RDF get involved, and whoever
at W3C did that RDF application didn't take into account that
RDF (out of the box) doesn't deal with order, whereas the order
of authors is usually relevant.

Also, as a former W3C Team member, I'd REALLY like to see
the URI, because for W3C Recs, the URI is the real thing.

Here is an examlpe of what I think things should look like
(from RFC 3987):

   [XML1]         Bray, T., Paoli, J., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Maler, E.,
                  and F. Yergeau, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
                  (Third Edition)", World Wide Web Consortium
                  Recommendation, February 2004,
                  <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>.

And here is the relevant piece of XML source, for the editors:

<reference anchor="XML1" target="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml">
  <front>
    <title>Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition)</title>
    <author initials="T." surname="Bray" fullname="Tim Bray"><organization/></author>
    <author initials="J." surname="Paoli" fullname="Jean Paoli"><organization/></author>
    <author initials="C.M." surname="Sperberg-McQueen" fullname="C. M. Sperberg-McQueen">
      <organization/></author>
    <author initials="E." surname="Maler" fullname="Eve Maler"><organization/></author>
    <author initials="F." surname="Yergeau" fullname="Francois Yergeau"><organization/></author>
    <date day="4" month="February" year="2004"/>
  </front>
  <seriesInfo name="World Wide Web Consortium" value="Recommendation"/>
</reference>

Second comment: Appendix A says:

   The contributors to [RFC3066bis], [RFC3066] and [RFC1766], each of
   which is a precursor to this document, made enormous contributions
   directly or indirectly to this document and are generally responsible
   for the success of language tags.

I think it's somewhat misleading to mention RFC3066bis (draft-ietf-ltru-registry)
as a precursor of draft-ietf-ltru-matching in the same way as RFC 3066 and
RFC 1766 (I understand that draft-ietf-ltru-registry and draft-ietf-ltru-matching
were once a single document, and in this way, draft-ietf-ltru-registry can be
called a 'precursor', but for somebody not understanding the document history,
this will be confusing.) I would suggest to improve this as follows
(approprately formatted):

   The contributors to [RFC3066] and [RFC1766], each of
   which is a precursor to this document, as well as the contributors to
   [RFC3066bis], made enormous contributions
   directly or indirectly to this document and are generally responsible
   for the success of language tags.

Third comment: The Abstract says:

   This document describes a syntax, called a "language-range", for
   specifying items in a user's language preferences, called a "language
   priority list".  It also describes different mechanisms for comparing
   and matching these to language tags.  Two kinds of matching
   mechanisms, filtering and lookup, are defined.  Filtering produces a
   (potentially empty) set of language tags, whereas lookup produces a
   single language tag.  Possible applications include language
   negotiation or content selection.  This document, in combination with
   RFC 3066bis (Ed.: replace "3066bis" with the RFC number assigned to
   draft-ietf-ltru-registry-14), replaces RFC 3066, which replaced RFC
   1766.

I'm not totally happy with the first sentence, in particular the second
part:

   This document describes a syntax, called a "language-range", for
   specifying items in a user's language preferences, called a "language
   priority list".

It's not really clear whether "language priority list" refers to "items"
or "preferences"; in both cases, there is a singular/plural conflict.
There are at least two ways to improve this:

a) be more explicit, e.g.:

   This document describes a syntax, called a "language-range", for
   specifying items in the list of a user's language preferences,
   called a "language priority list".

b) be less explicit, e.g.:

   This document describes a syntax, called a "language-range", for
   specifying items in a user's list of language preferences.

I have to say that I prefer b), because it is simpler, and while
the spec does (define and use) the term "language preference list",
it does not actually define a protocol element and syntax with that name,
and therefore mentioning this term in the abstract is of minor importance
(or actually gives the wrong impression).

Regards,     Martin.

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:[email-masked]     

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Ltru mailing list
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---

From: "Addison Phillips" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 12:57:19 +0100

Hi Martin,

> draft-ietf-ltru-matching-14.txt currently has:

I already have it on the to-do list. Thank you for producing the correct
XML. Did you forward it to the maintainers of bibxml4?

> I think it's somewhat misleading to mention RFC3066bis 
> (draft-ietf-ltru-registry) as a precursor of draft-ietf-ltru-matching in
the same way as 
> RFC 3066 and RFC 1766 (I understand that draft-ietf-ltru-registry and 
> draft-ietf-ltru-matching were once a single document, and in this way, 
> draft-ietf-ltru-registry can be
> called a 'precursor', but for somebody not understanding the 
> document history, this will be confusing.) I would suggest to improve this
as follows

In fact, most of the text in draft-matching was ripped bodily from
draft-registry... but more than that, the work that went into draft-registry
to a great degree made this document's content "obvious". And much of this
document's text was developed while it was still a part of draft-registry.
The problem here is that the acknowledgements list for this document could
not be recreated from the mashup in draft-registry (I just didn't track the
stuff separately through the 10 draft-phillips-davis drafts and 10 or so
draft-registry drafts before the split).

Perhaps we should make that particular fact more explicit by saying:

--
The contributors to [RFC 1766] and [RFC 3066], each of which was a precursor
to this document, contributed greatly to the development of language tag
matching, and, in particular, the basic language range and the basic
matching scheme. This document was originally part of [RFC 3066bis], but was
split off before that document's completion. Thus, directly or indirectly,
those acknowledged in [RFC 3066bis] also had a hand in the the development
of this document, and work done prior to the split is acknowledged in that
document.
--

I have nothing in particular to say about the last comment.

Addison

Addison Phillips
Internationalization Architect - Yahoo! Inc.

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Duerst [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: 2006?6?13? 6:40
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: LTRU Working Group
> Subject: [Ltru] Last Call: 'Matching of Language Tags' to 
> Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-ltru-matching)

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:59:06 -0700

Hi -

As a technical contributor...

> From: "Martin Duerst" <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Cc: "LTRU Working Group" <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 10:40 PM
> Subject: [Ltru] Last Call: 'Matching of Language Tags' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-ltru-matching) 
...
> (or actually gives the wrong impression).
...

Though I see nothing wrong with the sentence as is, I think the
concerns might be addressed by something like:

   This document describes a syntax, called a "language-range".
   This syntax can function in protocol-specific constructs as part
   of a language priority list, indicating language preferences.

But I don't feel strongly about this.

Randy

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:06:26 +0900

>But I don't feel strongly about this.

Your text would be fine with me, too.

Regards,   Martin.