Subject: [Tools-discuss] max length for WG short-form name?

From: =JeffH <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:20:45 -0800

what's the max length for a WG short-form name, e.g. "speermint", "mediactrl" ?

The longest I see presently in use are 9 chars, which will work for our needs; 
although I'm curious about the actual present length limit.

thanks,

=JeffH

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From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:50:37 +0100

Jeff Hodges wrote:

> The longest I see presently in use are 9 chars, which will work for
> our needs; although I'm curious about the actual present length
> limit.

Difficult to say. The database field used to be 12 characters,
but at some point it was changed to 255 (don't know when exactly). 
Not all of the code was updated, though -- e.g. the code I first
checked (Django model for this database table) still had 12 (*).
The datatracker main page search box has 10 (*)

Despite earlier warnings about the pain it would cause, I took 
a brief look at some *really* old (but still used by the secretariat)
ColdFusion code, and found some places had 8, others 12.

Given this, I think sticking to 8 (or perhaps 9) is going
to be much less work :-)

(*) filed as bug http://trac.tools.ietf.org/tools/ietfdb/ticket/332

Best regards,
Pasi

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From: Richard Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:55:51 -0500

What sort of working group are you contemplating, Jeff?

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 2:20 PM, =JeffH <[email-masked]>wrote:

> The longest I see presently in use are 9 chars, which will work for our
> needs; although I'm curious about the actual present length limit.
>
> thanks,
>
> =JeffH
> _______________________________________________
> Tools-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tools-discuss
>

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:08:10 -0600

Heh. In yet another process BCP that we apparently ignore (in this case, RFC 
2418):

2.2. Charter

[deleted down to]

   Specifically, each charter consists of the following sections:

   Working group name
      A working group name should be reasonably descriptive or
      identifiable. Additionally, the group shall define an acronym
      (maximum 8 printable ASCII characters) to reference the group in
      the IETF directories, mailing lists, and general documents.

This is why "softwire" was singular, IIRC - but that's the last conversation 
I remember about acronyms.

Given that we already have names that are longer than 8 characters 
(including a WG I co-chair, although I wasn't participating when it was 
chartered), "8" is probably the wrong answer.

Pasi, do you think the places where you saw an 8-character limit caused 
problems for 9-character names? I'm guessing that if no one has found a 
problem yet, the code just truncates longer names and works if no two names 
are identical for the first 8 characters ("speermint" and "speerminty-fresh" 
might have a problem), but I've never seen the ColdFusion code you're 
referring to.

I hope this is helpful.

Spencer

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From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:12:32 +0100

Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> problems for 9-character names? 

Perhaps. I certainly would not recommend trying two names that are
identical for the first 8 characters :-)

Best regards,
Pasi