Subject: PKINIT textual clarity

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005 21:38:35 -0500

It's been suggested on several occasions that various parts of PKINIT are 
not sufficiently clear, and that this may cause problems for implementors. 
In most cases when this has happened, we have agreed to make changes, 
usually small ones, to correct the specific problem that was pointed out.

Without trying to put words in anyone's mouth, my conversations with one 
participant leave me with the feeling that he thinks this is sort of like 
trying to empty the ocean one drop at a time -- you're doing a lot of work, 
but not actually making any progress.

It seems that at least some people feel that PKINIT could use some 
substantial textual revision (NOT protocol changes) in order to improve its 
clarity.  Some may even be willing to help with such an effort, if the 
working group agrees the work is needed.  However, doing this will 
obviously introduce some delay, which I suspect will not make it terribly 
popular.

I'd like to see some discussion on this topic over the next couple of 
weeks.  In particular, do folks feel that substantial changes of this type 
are needed or desirable?  Is the group willing to accept some delay (we can 
set a time limit) in order to get a clearer document with no protocol 
changes?

I'll be starting a two-week last call on PKINIT as soon as -23 becomes 
available.  We'll consider the textual-clarity issue separately from but 
concurrently with any issues brought up during last-call.  If we decide to 
go ahead with textual revisions, they will be made starting with the 
document as its stands after last-call issues are addressed.

-- Jeff

---

From: "Liqiang(Larry) Zhu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:41:39 -0800

If I understand this correctly, folks in the past complained that the
use of CMS objects are not described with sufficient details. 

we have only 1 CMS object that need this level of details (the type
ContentInfo), I do not consider the changes substantial if we just want
to add clarifications based on draft-housley-cms-fw-wrap-10.txt. If
nothing else, we can just add an appendix for this alone.

I have not looked at PKIX type Name closely yet.

-- Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey
Hutzelman
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 6:39 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: PKINIT textual clarity

It's been suggested on several occasions that various parts of PKINIT
are not sufficiently clear, and that this may cause problems for
implementors. 
In most cases when this has happened, we have agreed to make changes,
usually small ones, to correct the specific problem that was pointed
out.

Without trying to put words in anyone's mouth, my conversations with one
participant leave me with the feeling that he thinks this is sort of
like trying to empty the ocean one drop at a time -- you're doing a lot
of work, but not actually making any progress.

It seems that at least some people feel that PKINIT could use some
substantial textual revision (NOT protocol changes) in order to improve
its clarity.  Some may even be willing to help with such an effort, if
the working group agrees the work is needed.  However, doing this will
obviously introduce some delay, which I suspect will not make it
terribly popular.

I'd like to see some discussion on this topic over the next couple of
weeks.  In particular, do folks feel that substantial changes of this
type are needed or desirable?  Is the group willing to accept some delay
(we can set a time limit) in order to get a clearer document with no
protocol changes?

I'll be starting a two-week last call on PKINIT as soon as -23 becomes
available.  We'll consider the textual-clarity issue separately from but
concurrently with any issues brought up during last-call.  If we decide
to go ahead with textual revisions, they will be made starting with the
document as its stands after last-call issues are addressed.

-- Jeff