Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SAYSHELL.UMD.EDU!louie
From: louie@SAYSHELL.UMD.EDU ("Louis A. Mamakos")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Comment on RFC1124 (?) / OSI Transition
Message-ID: <8910100305.AA19076@sayshell.umd.edu>
Date: 10 Oct 89 06:05:40 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 52

Geez.  What a fuss.

Do you all have a serious interest in the particular RFC's that were
published in PostScript, or is this just another opportunity to flame?
Have you tried to USE these RFCs and found them deficient?

A measure of success for an RFC is if it meets the needs of the audience 
it was written for.  I can't speak to RFC 1124, but have quite intimate
experince with the NTP spec; or rather with its many, many draft versions.

I'd like to speak to the utility of RFC1119, on the Network Time
Protocol.  The development of the NTP RFC took quite a long time.  I
wrote an implementation of NTP based on many of the draft NTP protocol
specificiations.  The idea was to find out if the protocol described
by the document actually matched and could interoperate with the
version that Mills, the author, developed.  Also during this process
the protocol was changed and improved due to the testing that was
performed.

During this entire process I read literally 20 different versions of
this specification.  They were all in the form of a PostScript
document.  A number of other folks on the NTP mailing list also read
this document and submitted suggestions to Mills relating to the
content and typographical appearence of the document.  I can't recall
a single occasion when someone complained that the document was only
available in PostScript form.

My point is that the *content* of the RFC was what this group of folks
were interested in, and not the form.  It really didn't impact *my*
use of the spec.  Yes, it's a little more difficult to print the
thing, but having the spec published in PostScript enhances the
understanding of the material.

The result of this experience is that, yes, the spec does describe the
protocol in sufficient detail that at least two different
implementations of NTP were built from the document.  The talk to each
other as well as the implemention built by the author of the protocol.
I think that's a wonderful thing from the point of view of a protocol
implementor.

I suppose that some folks don't have a PostScript printer available to 
print these documents; the quick answer is that paper versions are available
from the NIC.  I think PostScript capable printers are becoming very
popular and affordable these days.  It is true that you can't grep the
text of the document.  But, IMO the added readability of the PostScript
form outweighs the utility to grep it.

This is my perspective as a serious user of RFC 1119.  Before you
condemn the form, print the document and ask yourself if it would be
as easy to understand if it was a "dumb" ASCII text document?

louie