From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Sat Mar 13 2004 - 06:38:14 CST
In <4051B957.3080001@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>> The problem that I face is that there are people on my left who want
>> weaker language (or even no language at all) whereas there are people on
>> my right who are determined that stronger language is necessary. As far as
>> I can tell, by counting heads, there are slightly more people on my right
>> than on my left. Which makes it rather hard to reach a consensus.
>As Mark Crispin says:
>"Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate."
Sadly, writing Standards is never the Scientific activity that it should
be, because that awkward thing, the "Real World", keeps getting in the
way.
>We're trying to develop an engineering standard, not judge a beauty
>contest. There are clear-cut engineering principles that can be used
>to determine whether or not something is part of a protocol, whether
>or not ABNF agrees with other verbiage, whether or not wording and
>ABNF in one standard agrees with another document, whether or not
>something which can be elided at point B is capable of carrying
>information from point A to point C, etc. Saying something equivalent
>to "I favor contestant E because she has more structure than the others"
>isn't engineering.
>Either a case is being made based on engineering principles, with sound
>rationale, or it is not. Strident rhetoric with no substantiation
>doesn't count. This is part of an IETF effort; the E stands for
>Engineering.
Ah! I see what you are saying now!
You are an engineer. You have a sound understanding and experience of the
essential principles as to how these things should be ordered, and hence
it is plainly obvious that all mention of this matter should be removed
from those parts of the document relating to protocol.
Whereas Henry Spencer, on the other hand, is not an engineer. His
understanding is faulty and his experience is lacking, and hence he is in
no position to state what are protocol issues and what are not.
Therefore I, as Editor, should unquestionably follow your advice, and
those of the others on my left, and totally ingnore the erroneous
opionions expressed by Henry, and those others on my right. So that settles
the matter then.
NOT.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5