Subject: [Tools-discuss] Page-per-draft

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 23:02:01 +0100

I found myself sitting at breakfast last week with an
IBM colleague who is active in the W3C and very occasionally
needs to dabble in the IETF. He recently wanted to make some
comments on an IETF draft. He told me it was a real pain,
because even knowing the name of the draft he couldn't easily
find out the real status of the draft and where comments
should be sent. Now this isn't a problem for us because we know
enough about the IETF process to track this down. It took him
quite a while to even find the I-D tracker (er, not obvious
on the home page) and to click through it to find the status.
Even then it isn't obvious to an occasional user where to send
comments.

So, his suggestion is a home page per draft on which the metadata
would be marshalled appropriately to give information like
current status, and where to send comments (according to that
status).

The WG pages don't quite do it, because they assume you know
the name of the relevant WG, and independent submissions aren't
taken care of.

This would be http://tools.ietf.org/id/ on steroids :-)

     Brian

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 18:40:25 -0800

In my humble opinion, there should be something that tracks a draft  
from cradle to grave, and contains such info. What we have right now  
mostly tracks the IESG process; it has no hooks for the WG process,  
managing comments against drafts, etc. Realizing that "wanting" is a  
distance from "having", we probably want to pick a more diable  
target. But count me as generally supportive of this.

> This would be http://tools.ietf.org/id/ on steroids :-)

--------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already  
tomorrow in Australia." (Charles Schulz )

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 07:58:07 -0800

> current status, and where to send comments (according to that

Good suggestion. But the details are tricky, because some of the meta
data is not actually part of the draft today. I.e., where to send
comments to. For non-WG documents, that info is sometimes in the
document, but its not required and there is no standard for indicating
that (that could be turned into meta data). 

> the name of the relevant WG, and independent submissions aren't

This tool would be a useful way also of indicating whether a document
is even a WG document. That info is currently available, but one has
to be an insider to know how to figure this out.

Thomas

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 09:13:48 -0800

ok, so going off to a previous thread - if we had a web page that a  
user could use to submit a draft (such as perhaps running the XML2RFC  
tool for him), the necessary information could be requested on the  
web page:

  - email list for discussion/comment
  - date of initial submission
  - context (WG, individual, etc)
  - picture of the author's dog

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 09:34:43 -0800

> current status, and where to send comments (according to that

Good idea.  As I now have sufficient space on the servers for this,
I'll get it under way.

> This would be http://tools.ietf.org/id/ on steroids :-)

Right.  I'll think about integrating it with that tool, or making
it a separate thing - I have an idea about possible integration,
but will have to test it and see if it works out right.

[Fred]
> target. But count me as generally supportive of this.

Right.  Putting in place a nice view / presentation of the current
information would be a first target; being able to input additional
information might be a new tool, or an extension of the tracker.
(And any such additional information should also show up in the
per-document view.

[Thomas]
> that (that could be turned into meta data). 

Right.  That is certainly a problem.  One first approximation could be
the WG list for WG documents, and the author email addresses for the
non-WG documents.  All this information is currently available; but
if the document specifies a different list than the WG list for WG
docs, or a list instead of individual author addresses, that won't be
reflected in the presented meta-information.

Once the draft submission tool is in place, that will provide a nice
point to capture such meta-information.

> to be an insider to know how to figure this out.

Right!  Good point.

	Henrik