Subject: [apps-discuss] AppsDir review of draft-ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade-05

From: Claudio Allocchio <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:18:16 +0200 (CEST)

Hello all,

I have been selected as the Applications Area Directorate co-reviewer for
this draft (for background on appsdir, please see
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/app/trac/wiki/ApplicationsAreaDirectorate
).

Please resolve these comments along with any other Last Call comments you
may receive. Please wait for direction from your document shepherd or AD
before posting a new version of the draft.

Document: draft-ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade-05
Title: Post-delivery Message Downgrading for Internationalized Email
        Messages
Reviewer: Claudio Allocchio
Review Date: April 30th 2012
IETF Last Call Date: n/a
IESG Telechat Date: n/a

Summary: This document is requires a major decision about updating/non 
updating RFC 5322 before it can go to publication. Once this is done, 
other minor changes are listed below and it can be published. Another 
issue to clarify/fix is its relationship with 
draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade-03 specification (and also in that 
document, of course, with respect to this one).

Major Issues:

3. Updating RFC 5322

this is a big major issue in this specification.

I do not believe that stating something like "It is anticipated that when 
existing implementations encounter a downgraded field from this set, many 
will tolerate the appearance of a group" is a possible thing into a 
Standards Track specification.  Th "update" to RFC 5322 is a big major 
one, and cons should be carefully evaluated here, too. As the "Notes in 
Draf" itself states, there is an alternate, much safer mechamism which can 
be used, and convey the same information to the user. This isse must be 
clarified before this specification can be publisehd, and a decision 
taken.

Minor Issues:

there is not cross-reference at all with

draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade-03!

many implementers could ge confused about the releationship between these 
specifications. In the Summary this should be explicitly described and 
clearly stated.

Security Considerations

this section describes quite well the possible scenarios which this 
specification introduces (and can also be a good example for re-writing
the same secrion in draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade-03); I'd just suggest a 
further review by the Security area folks, too. Just in case...

  Nits:

1.1 Problem statement

I'd suggest removing "Discussions leading to this specification concluded 
that " and just start with "There are four...'

5.1.1 until 5.1.9

in the titles you use the defintions without the <...> surrounding them.
e.g.

   5.1.5 GROUP Downgrading.

I'd suggest changing them all using the < and > ... e.g.

   5.1.5 <GROUP> Downgrading.

etc.

IANA Considerartions:

... to be fixed with IANA before publication!

All over the document (and expecially in the A.1 example):

this document uses a different convetion than 
draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade-03 for non ASCII elements in 
addresses/fields. Please unify the used convetion with the other draft 
(whichever of the 2 convetion is better) before publication.

Here you write "NON-ASCII-something..." there you just use UPPERCASE.

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                         Senior Technical Officer
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