Context: The IETF Tools team works on requirements for various automated tools for the IETF. Many of the tools have to deal with internet-drafts; in these cases, the information whether an internet-draft is a working group draft or a personal draft is important. The mechanism by which such information is kept thus needs to be known to the tools and, correspondingly, reflected in the requirements. There appear to be at least three conceivable ways of keeping the information about internet-draft status: 1. Internet-draft name: working group internet-drafts are always named "draft-ietf-*", while personal drafts do not match this pattern. For a working group internet-draft, the third component of the file name is the working group abbreviation. When a personal internet-draft becomes a working group item, or when a working group item is no longer one, or when an internet-draft changes the working group, the internet-draft gets republished under a new name, without exception. (This could be automated in a way that would ensure that name history is consistently and reliably captured.) 2. Metadata kept separately: the file name has nothing to do with the status, which is kept separately. The file name is stable and never changes (other than the version number). The working group status is prominently indicated by all tools (in announcement subject lines, etc.). 3. Current situation: technically, (2) (however, name stability isn't enforced or actively encouraged). Informally, (1) for most working groups. Many (most?) participants infer (1). Tools penalize non-"draft-ietf-*" working group internet-drafts by making their working group status less prominent. For the purposes of specifying the requirements for tool development, it is necessary to know which way to keep the information. It is rather obvious that (1) and (2) are both vastly preferable to (3). The choice between (1) and (2) is less clear. Advantages of (1): * simpler; * matches existing expectations of most participants; * makes working group status automatically prominent. Advantages of (2): * cleaner; * allows tracking of document history better and easier. It appears that the Tools team has a slight preference of (1) in favor of (2) because of the existing convention (but (2) is perfectly workable; it would simply require a bit of an education effort). However, (3) appears so much inferior to either (1) or (2) that proponents of (1) and (2) would both be reasonably expected to be willing to compromise so that (3) is avoided. With this in mind, we would like to raise the question: Which way of keeping the status should the Tools team use in the requirements for the tools it is specifying? -- Stanislav Shalunov http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/ This message is designed to be viewed with 0.06479891g of NaCl. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf