Subject: [EAI] Request for advancement of draft-ietf-eai-{utf8headers, smtpext} to Experimental

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:54:09 +0100

Enclosed is the writeup for the request to advance the two documents

      draft-ietf-eai-utf8headers-09
      draft-ietf-eai-smtpext-11

to Experimental status.

Please process appropriately; we believe an IETF Last Call is a Good Thing.

                       Harald Alvestrand, WG chair.

(February 1, 2007 template)

Writeup for the documents:

draft-ietf-eai-smtpext-11
draft-ietf-eai-utf8heders-09

destined for Experimental status.

(the writeup for the linked draft-ietf-eai-dsn-05 is sent separately)

   (1.a)  Who is the Document Shepherd for this document?  Has the
          Document Shepherd personally reviewed this version of the
          document and, in particular, does he or she believe this
          version is ready for forwarding to the IESG for publication?

	  Harald Alvestrand. Yes.

   (1.b)  Has the document had adequate review both from key WG members
          and from key non-WG members?  Does the Document Shepherd have
          any concerns about the depth or breadth of the reviews that
          have been performed?

	  Yes. No.

   (1.c)  Does the Document Shepherd have concerns that the document
          needs more review from a particular or broader perspective,
          e.g., security, operational complexity, someone familiar with
          AAA, internationalization or XML?

	  No.

   (1.d)  Does the Document Shepherd have any specific concerns or
          issues with this document that the Responsible Area Director
          and/or the IESG should be aware of?  For example, perhaps he
          or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of the document, or
          has concerns whether there really is a need for it.  In any
          event, if the WG has discussed those issues and has indicated
          that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those
          concerns here.  Has an IPR disclosure related to this document
          been filed?  If so, please include a reference to the
          disclosure and summarize the WG discussion and conclusion on
          this issue.

	  No.

   (1.e)  How solid is the WG consensus behind this document?  Does it
          represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with
          others being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and
          agree with it?

	  I believe the WG as a whole understands and agrees that the
	  documents are a solid description of the chosen approach.
	  See below for the "possible conflict".

   (1.f)  Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
          discontent?  If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in
          separate email messages to the Responsible Area Director.  (It
          should be in a separate email because this questionnaire is
          entered into the ID Tracker.)

	  Charles Lindsey and Frank Ellermann have argued strongly
	  against a specific point in the specification: The
	  transmission of EAI messages in a subtype of
	  "message". Charles has indicated that he will re-raise this
	  issue at Last Call time.

   (1.g)  Has the Document Shepherd personally verified that the
          document satisfies all ID nits?  (See
          http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html and
          http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/).  Boilerplate checks are
          not enough; this check needs to be thorough.  Has the document
          met all formal review criteria it needs to, such as the MIB
          Doctor, media type and URI type reviews?

	  Yes.
	  MIME type review was asked for on January 21, 2008; one positive
	  comment has been recieved as of February 22.

   (1.h)  Has the document split its references into normative and
          informative?  Are there normative references to documents that
          are not ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear
          state?  If such normative references exist, what is the
          strategy for their completion?  Are there normative references
          that are downward references, as described in [RFC3967]?  If
          so, list these downward references to support the Area
          Director in the Last Call procedure for them [RFC3967].

	  Yes.
	  SMTP:
	  There are normative references to -dsn and -utf8hdr, which
	  are part of this package, as well as mailesc-registry, which
	  should go forward ahead of it.
	  UTF8:
	  There are normative references to -smtpext, which is part of
          this package.

   (1.i)  Has the Document Shepherd verified that the document IANA
          consideration section exists and is consistent with the body
          of the document?  If the document specifies protocol
          extensions, are reservations requested in appropriate IANA
          registries?  Are the IANA registries clearly identified?  If
          the document creates a new registry, does it define the
          proposed initial contents of the registry and an allocation
          procedure for future registrations?  Does it suggest a
          reasonable name for the new registry?  See [RFC2434].  If the
          document describes an Expert Review process has Shepherd
          conferred with the Responsible Area Director so that the IESG
          can appoint the needed Expert during the IESG Evaluation?

	  Yes. No new registries, -SMTP has some new values to register.

   (1.j)  Has the Document Shepherd verified that sections of the
          document that are written in a formal language, such as XML
          code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, etc., validate correctly in
          an automated checker?

	  Yes. One minor ABNF error has been identified, and will be
          corrected with other Last Call comments.

   (1.k)  The IESG approval announcement includes a Document
          Announcement Write-Up.  Please provide such a Document
          Announcement Write-Up?  Recent examples can be found in the
          "Action" announcements for approved documents.  The approval
          announcement contains the following sections:

          Technical Summary
	     These two documents form the core specification for an
	     extension to SMTP and RFC 2822 that allow the free use of
	     UTF-8 in message headers without encoding.

	     This includes the use of non-ASCII characters in email
	     addresses, both on the left and right hand sides of the
	     @ character.

          Working Group Summary
	     The WG was chartered to explore one particular approach
	     to email internationalization, and succeeded in keeping
	     to that charter.
	     There was extensive discussion of one particular design
	     choice - on which MIME type to use.

          Document Quality
             The documents have been extensively reviewed by people
             with mail expertise. There have been reports of
             implementations, but no interoperability tests have been
             reported to date.

  (end)
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---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:24:12 +0100

[mailed separately]

Harald Alvestrand wrote:

> transmission of EAI messages in a subtype of "message".

Just in case if it is unclear:  These objections are to
some degree orthogonal.  Charles argues that EAI cannot
overrule an "EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN" in MIME, while I came
to the conclusion that this is actually an error in MIME,
compare <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ima/2150>.

I argue that EAI has no business to update MIME at all,
EAI could solve Charles' issue with an erratum.  I like
message/global, but think its definition is flawed, if
there is no UTF-8 in the header (singular) the message
is implicitly a message/rfc822, not a message/global.

The EAI definition uses a convoluted MIME part parsing
checking headers (plural) of the message and MIME parts,
for the purpose of updating MIME allowing UTF-8 also in
MIME part headers.  IMO it's incompatible with MIME 1.0
and also no "KISS" solution.

> One minor ABNF error has been identified, and will be

I hope that covers the erroneous 1*FWS instead of FWS.

 Frank