Subject: [Tools-discuss] Re: I-D submission tool draft

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 11:07:48 -0600 (MDT)

James Kempf wrote:

> Most conferences and journals nowadays use an automated submission 
> system, I've heard there are 4 different systems used by various 
> conferences. One of them I've used extensively is EDAS 
> (http://edas.info/doc/) which was developed by Henning Schulzrinne. 
> I'd be curious to know why something like that won't work for IETF?

In my experience with conference/journal review automation tools, they 
should not be adopted for IETF purposes. There are just too many 
differences in the flow of operations, in what gets checked, what 
passing the checks means, etc.

Also, the conference/journal tools I have used and the ID Submission 
tool we are drafting are rather simple. I would be surprised if a lot 
of time can be saved by customizing an existing tool compared to 
writing a few scripts from scratch. We are talking about a few simple 
pages here. Most of the complexity is in validation and posting code 
that is beyond the scope of the ID submission draft and that cannot be 
adopted (existing IETF-specific tools aside) as it is specific to the 
IETF.

Alex.

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From: "James Kempf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 10:28:08 -0700

> adopted (existing IETF-specific tools aside) as it is specific to the

This is exactly what I am a little concerned about. I'd rather not see a lot
of effort put into "a few scripts from scratch". This suggests to me
something hacked together with little concern about how it is actually used.
I'd rather see a well designed tool with a good Web-based user interface
that automates draft submission (point and click) with proper attention to
workflow.

It may in fact be the case that the existing conference submission tools
don't satisfy IETF's needs, but I believe due diligence needs to be done to
make sure that is the case. Also, it may also be possible that one of the
existing tools might be easily modified if IETF's requirements are not all
that far off from what it provides. Henning Schulzrinne is a long time
participant in IETF, and he might be willing to work on modifying EDAS for
IETF's needs.

            jak

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From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 11:37:11 -0600 (MDT)

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, James Kempf wrote:

>> Also, the conference/journal tools I have used and the ID 
>> Submission tool we are drafting are rather simple. I would be 
>> surprised if a lot of time can be saved by customizing an existing 
>> tool compared to writing a few scripts from scratch. We are talking 
>> about a few simple pages here. Most of the complexity is in 
>> validation and posting code that is beyond the scope of the ID 
>> submission draft and that cannot be adopted (existing IETF-specific 
>> tools aside) as it is specific to the IETF.
>
> This is exactly what I am a little concerned about. I'd rather not 
> see a lot of effort put into "a few scripts from scratch". This 
> suggests to me something hacked together with little concern about 
> how it is actually used. I'd rather see a well designed tool with a 
> good Web-based user interface that automates draft submission (point 
> and click) with proper attention to workflow.
>
> It may in fact be the case that the existing conference submission 
> tools don't satisfy IETF's needs, but I believe due diligence needs 
> to be done to make sure that is the case. Also, it may also be 
> possible that one of the existing tools might be easily modified if 
> IETF's requirements are not all that far off from what it provides. 
> Henning Schulzrinne is a long time participant in IETF, and he might 
> be willing to work on modifying EDAS for IETF's needs.

Agreed, the Secretariat should reuse if reuse makes most sense. To me, 
"simple" does not mean "hacked together without concern about how it 
is actually used and without attention to workflow" :-). Careful use 
and flow analysis is what the draft in question is supposed to provide 
to the Secretariat. I just hope that it would be relatively simple to 
satisfy our requirements (draft interpretation/validation aside).

Thank you,

Alex.