Re: On ABNF in 5322: Advice needed

Hi Pete,
At 15:26 25-09-2008, Pete Resnick wrote:
>5322 (nee 2822upd) is in AUTH48. During this process, the editor 
>noted some confusion about some of the text: Sometimes when I say 
>(e.g.) "phrase", it's not clear whether I'm referring to the ABNF 
>terminal "phrase" or a description of it. It's somewhat easy to 
>distinguish, for instance, "a quoted string" from "quoted-string", 
>but other places it's trickier.
>
>The suggestion was made (and it's been made by others) that all ABNF 
>terminals should be surrounded with angle brackets, so it's easy to 
>distinguish "a phrase" from "<phrase>" and "a quoted string" from 
>"<quoted-string>". My argument against doing this has always been 
>(1) there are very few places in the text where it is ambiguous, and 
>none (AFAIK) where it makes a difference; and (2) going through and 
>making the change could result in errors. (It's a lot of occurrences 
>to go through.) Advice sought:
>
>Choice (A): "Don't touch a damn thing, Pete! It's too much of a risk 
>to screw things up, and we're moving to Draft Standard. And nothing 
>is so ambiguous as to make any difference."

I read the I-D again and I don't the need for a change at this stage 
especially as there is the risk to screw things up.  The editor has a 
different perspective reading the I-D and would find ambiguities we 
might not see.  I'm for choice (A).  I'll rely on your best judgement 
to determine what could be done in the few places where it is ambiguous.

>If you choose (B), I'd also like to hear your answer to the 
>question: Does this require cycling back through the IESG or 
>(*gasp*) another IETF last call?

I don't think that requires cycling back to the IESG as this is a 
question of style.  It certainly doesn't require another IETF Last Call.

Regards,
-sm