Subject: Re: [hybi] Comments on draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol-35

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:34:33 -0700

At 12:54 25-08-2009, Graham Klyne wrote:
>re: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol-35

This document gives a new meaning to work-in-progress. :-)  The I-D 
is currently at its 36th version.  The draft contains several "_This 
section is non-normative._".  Is the document incomplete?

>[Summary:  in its present form, a thumbs down.]

The document needs some work.

 From the Abstract:

   "It is intended to fail to
    communicate with servers of pre-existing protocols like SMTP or HTTP,
    while allowing HTTP servers to opt-in to supporting this protocol if
    desired."

That's the only mention of "SMTP" in the draft.  I suggest describing 
what the draft is about instead using such a sentence.

In the Introduction section:

   "Basically it is intended to be as close
    as possible to just exposing raw TCP/IP to script as possible given
    the constraints of the Web"

What is the "Web"?

In Section 2:

   "Requirements phrased in the imperative as part of algorithms (such as
    "strip any leading space characters" or "return false and abort these
    steps") are to be interpreted with the meaning of the key word
    ("must", "should", "may", etc) used in introducing the algorithm."

This draft uses RFC 2119 key words.

In Section 4.3:

  "To *fail the Web Socket connection*"

No comment. :-)

In its present state, this draft would not survive a review.

Regards,
-sm