Subject: Re: [Gen-art] Gen-art review of draft-allbery-afs-srv-records-04

From: Elwyn Davies <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:25:53 +0000

Hi, Russ,

Thanks for your response.

There are two items where I would differ with you.  Part of the point of 
gen-art is to ensure that the RFCs are adequately comprehensible to an 
audience that is not deep into the subject area but do not have a 
general knowledge of Internet protcols.  Part of the point of this is to 
allow people to quickly determine that documents are *really* not 
relevant and to allow implementers to know whether a piece of 
functionality is relevant without having to be totally cognizant of the 
details.  One important part of this is acronym expansion and jargon 
busting with definitions. 

Hence I believe it is worth adding a sentence along the lines of:
AFS is a system that shares an ancestry with the Andrew Filing System 
but is known by the unexpandable pseudo-acronym AFS for copyright reasons.

And I think some explanation of Rx is needed (Google tells me it is a 
'UDP based Client-Server Remote Procedure Call protocol used by AFS.')

BTW it is highly likely that you would have the same discussion with the 
RFC Editor.

The other points are agreed.

Regards,
Elwyn

Russ Allbery wrote:
> Elwyn Davies <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>   
>> Nits/editorial comments:
>> Abstract/s1: Either AFS is an acronym that should be expanded or its
>> relationship to the 'Andrew Filing System' should be explained.
>>     
>
> As Jeff explained, I don't believe there's much need to say anything here.
> AFS has been the official name of the protocol for many years, and I
> believe we'd otherwise have to add a note that Andrew is a registered
> trademark of Carnegie Mellon University and so forth.  The audience of the
> published document isn't going to care.
>
>   
>> s4: The PTS service name specified is afs3-prserver.  Since the server
>> is know as a PTS server, it would have seemed easier to remember if it
>> had been called 'afs3-ptserver'.  It is doubtless too late to make this
>> change.
>>     
>
> Unfortunately, yes.
>
>   
>> s4: The term 'Rx' needs some brief explanation for non-AFS experts.
>>     
>
> I'm not sure that it does in the contexts in which it's used, but I'd be
> happy to add something.  However, I don't know of a good brief explanation
> off-hand.  (Ideally, it would be a protocol reference, but there isn't one
> that I know of.)
>
>   
>> s5, para 6 (top of page 7): s/but be aware that configuration/but be
>> aware that that configuration/
>>     
>
> Changed to "but be aware that such a configuration" to avoid the duplicate
> word as a matter of style.
>
>   
>> s6, next to last para: s/doex not exist/did not exist/
>>     
>
> Eh.  Okay, changed, since I don't have a strong opinion.
>
>

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:56:41 -0500

--On Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:25:53 AM +0000 Elwyn Davies 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> audience that is not deep into the subject area but do not have a general
> knowledge of Internet protcols.  Part of the point of this is to allow
> people to quickly determine that documents are *really* not relevant and
> to allow implementers to know whether a piece of functionality is
> relevant without having to be totally cognizant of the details.  One
> important part of this is acronym expansion and jargoRe: Gen-art review 
of draft-allbery-afs-srv-records-04n busting with
> definitions.
> AFS is a system that shares an ancestry with the Andrew Filing System but
> is known by the unexpandable pseudo-acronym AFS for copyright reasons.

I think you're missing the point, perhaps.  That which used to be known as 
"Andrew File System" has instead been known as "AFS" for around 15 years. 
It was renamed a long time ago, while still available only as a commercial 
product, by the maker of that product.  I don't think the abstract of every 
document discussing AFS needs to explain the history of the name, any more 
than you need to explain to me how you got your name every time we have a 
conversation.  The name is what it is, and the fact that its canonical 
spelling consists of three capital letters doesn't change that.

> BTW it is highly likely that you would have the same discussion with the

No; RFC-Editor will say "acronyms need to be expanded"; Russ and/or I will 
say "not an acronym", and that will be that.

-- Jeff