Subject: [weirds] Barry Leiba's Discuss on draft-ietf-weirds-rdap-query-16: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

From: "Barry Leiba" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 23:37:08 -0700

Barry Leiba has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-weirds-rdap-query-16: Discuss

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DISCUSS:
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-- Section 3.2.1 --
None of the syntaxes begin with "/", and then you have a examples that
do.  Probably should take the "/" off the examples, no?  But I see that
the json-response document also uses the leading slash.  But but, the
bootstrapping document says that the URLs MUST end with slashes, because
query specifications are appended to them (therefore the query
specifications don't begin with slashes).  This all seems somewhat
inconsistent.

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COMMENT:
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-- Section 1.1 --
You have some repetition repetition in the definition of REST.

I suggest adding a little to the definition of IDNA, to make it clear
that it's not just a handy abbreviation, but a pointer to something
specific: "Internationalized Domain Names in Applications, a protocol for
the handling of IDNs."

Also, some of these terms (such as NFC and NFKC) have references where
they're used down below.  It wouldn't be a bad idea to cite those
references up here as well.

-- Section 3 --

   Queries are
   formed by retrieving the appropriate base URL from the registry

This may seem picayune, but I think it should be "an appropriate base
URL", not "the".  There may be more than one, and the bootstrap doc says
that if one doesn't work, try another.  It also doesn't give any guidance
on selecting from among multiple https URLs, or multiple http ones.

-- Section 3.1.3 --

   IDNs SHOULD NOT be represented as a mixture of A-labels and U-labels;
   that is, all internationalized labels in an IDN SHOULD be either
   A-labels or U-labels.

You think the bit after the "that is" clarifies, but I don't.  I suggest
that this does:
NEW
   IDNs SHOULD NOT be represented as a mixture of A-labels and U-labels;
   that is, internationalized labels in an IDN SHOULD be either all
   A-labels or all U-labels.
END

-- Section 4.1 --

   Partial matching is not feasible across combinations of Unicode
   characters because Unicode characters can be combined with another
   Unicode character or characters.  Servers SHOULD NOT partially match
   combinations of Unicode characters where a Unicode character may be
   legally combined with another Unicode character or characters.  It
   should be noted, though, that it may not always be possible to detect
   possible cases where a character could have been combined with
   another character, but was not, because of the way combining
   characters can be combined with many other characters.

I'm not going to try to re-write that myself (don't try this at home!),
and I did understand it... but I have to say that it's a truly convoluted
paragraph.  Please see if you can say this and the subsequent paragraph
in a different way without the "combined combining character characters
with combined character combinations" feel to it.

---

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:39:30 +0000

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barry Leiba [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 2:37 AM
> To: The IESG
> Cc: [email-masked]; draft-ietf-weirds-rdap-
> [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: Barry Leiba's Discuss on draft-ietf-weirds-rdap-query-16:
> (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)
> 

Given the text in Section 3 (Path Segment Specification) and the bootstrap document, yes, I should remove the leading "/" from the examples. Andy and I can make sure that rdap-query and json-response do this consistently.

Oops, yes, that should be fixed.

> references up here as well.

Agreed on both points.

> on selecting from among multiple https URLs, or multiple http ones.

Agreed, "an".

>    A-labels or all U-labels.

Agreed.

> with combined character combinations" feel to it.

How is this?

NEW
Partial matching is not feasible across combinations of Unicode characters because Unicode characters can be combined with each other. Servers SHOULD NOT partially match combinations of Unicode characters where a legal combination is possible. It should be noted, though, that it may not always be possible to detect cases where a character could have been combined with another character, but was not, because characters can be combined in many different ways.
END

Scott

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 09:39:22 -0400

> Given the text in Section 3 (Path Segment Specification) and the bootstrap
> document, yes, I should remove the leading "/" from the examples. Andy
> and I can make sure that rdap-query and json-response do this consistently.

Thanks!

> Partial matching is not feasible across combinations of Unicode characters because Unicode characters can be combined with each other. Servers SHOULD NOT partially match combinations of Unicode cha…

Ahhhhh... that seems smoother; thanks for that.

Barry