Re: NR, redux, again.

[Ed Gerck <egerck@xxxxxxx>]

Bob Jueneman wrote:

> I agree with Ed that there have been a multiplicity of meanings
> proposed for the NR bit, and as yet no clear consensus.

Thank you for making my words clearer. The first WG consensus
was that setting the NR-bit is neither necessary nor sufficient to
define the provision of NR services. From this first consensus
emerged a multiplicity of meanings, for which there was no clear
consensus -- but it was recognized that the solution does not have
to be either/or (i.e., we could have two, three or more aceptable and
properly discriminated NR meanings).

The problem is to enumerate these meanings in a order relation
of "strength" and to map them to on/off states of bits.

There are at present two enumerations of these NR meanings,
and how they could be mapped to the states of on/off bits
in the keyUsage byte. The approach by Tom Ginding with a
proposed RFC and two NR states defined by the NR bit, and
 my own enumeration with four states of DS/NR defined by four
states of the DS/NR bits.

These efforts should be mentioned in the roadmap, at least as
"work in progress" -- caused by the first consensus.

The second WG consensus which the roadmap failed to
mention was that the NR definition MUST be changed, as Bob says:

> Yet is it clear, I believe, that this matter simply MUST be resolved,
> one way or the other (or the other, or the other).

I also agree with Bob that just one bit is not enough:

> Then, once it becomes obvious that a single bit is not sufficient
> to represent all of the different and useful notions that are at
> least close to NR, we can them make progress in defining those
> addition bits or states.

but, since "once it becomes obvious" may take some time, I think
that Tom's RFC could provide a useful bridge in the meantime. I
believe that this was Tom's intention. Which is another reason to
mention that RFC in the roadmap, as it distills if not the solution at
least IMO most of the WG's reasonings on the way to a solution [*].

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

[*] As commented in the book "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind" by Guy
Claxton, the NR issue exemplifies the need for the Hare Brain in us to
have an RFC that can be used while the Tortoise Mind in us continues
to work on making progress towards a more comprehensive solution.