Detective story (was: Language editing)

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At 13:23 06-05-2013, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
I don't that is quite right. The problem in this case is not to do
with linguistic quality. It's due to a lack of formal verification

Quoting from the detective story:

  "At [censored] we have changed our mail server configuration in the past few
   months, and are now using a mail server from [censored] namely the
   [censored] Server."

There isn't any mention of whether the mail server was tested.

  "Seemingly at random my efforts to send mail just fail."

There would likely be an error code with text providing an explanation. I would probably follow a different debugging path. Anyway, the session showed:

  "EHLO [IPv6:2001:df9::4015:1430:8367:2073:5d0]
   501 5.5.4 Invalid domain name"

This is where I go and read RFC 6409 and I find that:

  "The MSA SHOULD log message errors, especially apparent
   misconfigurations of client software."

And then follow up with RFC 5321 where I find a mention of address literals. I go and read RFC 4291 which is a Draft Standard. I see an update in RFC 5952 which is a Proposed Standard. As I was told that the Internet runs on Proposed Standards that update must be right. I see the following:

  "The recommendation in this section SHOULD be followed by systems
   when generating an address to be represented as text, but all
   implementations MUST accept and be able to handle any legitimate
   [RFC4291] format."

Back to the detective story:

  "The writing if RFC5952 is incredibly sloppy for a Proposed Standard"

I look at the write-up:

 "The 6MAN working group reviewed and discussed this document several
  times. There is a strong consensus to move this forward."

 "This document has been reviewed by key members of the 6MAN working
  group and the chairs."

I look at the IESG evaluation and I see:

 "Language & grammar are rough."

Between you and me, these Area Directors are trouble-makers.  :-)

I verify compliance (2010), RFC 2821, RFC 4409; there isn't any mention of the IPv6 specifications mentioned in the detective story.

There are people out there who have to fix problems like this. There are people out there who have to read those specifications and figure out where is the head and where is the tail.

Regards,
-sm




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