Subject: Re: [rohc] RE: Annotoations - was (RE: ROHC-FN Snapshot - Wednesd ay's update )

From: Kristofer Sandlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 08:59:38 +0200

Hi,

since this discussion seems to deteriorate into religious warfare, let me 
suggest a compromise. If I have managed to misunderstand the points of conflict 
after 100s of mail of the subject, please do hit me over the head with a mail 
swarm and I'll butt out of this issue forever.

We have all agreed that the annotations don't actually have a normative meaning 
so why not do the following:
- Relax the text around them to clearly show that this is actually just a 
comment and does not mean anything formal.
- Remove all mention of tools. If someone wants to write parsers or use tools, 
then fine, but why mention it in the specification? If a profile writer happens 
to abuse these for some reason, they are still just comments.
- Rename them from Annotations to "Field Width Comments" to emphasize that these 
are COMMENTS

Can Ghyslain agree on keeping them then? And also, can Carsten and Robert agree 
to this kind of reduction of them?

My suggestion for a replacement text is the following:

4.7  Comments

    Comments do not affect the formal meaning of what is
    notated, but can be used to improve readability.  Their use is
    optional.

    ......<rest of the section is unmodified>..........

<I simply removed any mention of annotations>

4.7.3  Field Width Comments

    A special type of comment that can be used to help the reader interpret 
packet formats is bitfield width comments. As all comments, these have no formal 
meaning, but normally only appears immediately after a field name. These 
comments use a "[" and "]" as delimiters. Enclosed within these brackets, a 
number indicating the width of the preceding field should be written.

  For example:

       uncompressed_format  =   discriminator     [  8 ],
                                tcp.seq_number    [ 32 ],
                                tcp.flags.ecn     [  2 ],

<Now, it should be clear to the reader that these do not mean anything, and 
there is no mention of tools or other "offending" words. There is no description 
of what happens if they are "wrong" etc which also makes it clear that these do 
not have any kind of meaning. The text can be improved if you accept what I'm 
trying to suggest>

Can they really offend anyone now? If the problem is the use of brackets, then 
the same person should also be offended by the fact that we can have both "%" 
and "/* ... */" comments. And this does in no way stop the use of parsing tools.

/Kristofer Sandlund, Effnet AB

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From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 11:22:40 +0200

On Oct 01 2004, at 08:59 Uhr, Kristofer Sandlund wrote:

> Field Width Comments

Fine with me.
I'd remove the "normally" -- for now, they only can occur after field 
names in field lists.

Gruesse, Carsten