Re: WG ACTION: 2 weeks to discuss [LL60] Forward reference style

While it's not a big deal, the statement "This is standard practice in all
RFCs that include constants" can be disproven by counterexample; RFC 3315
defines all of the symbolic constants in an early section before any of
those constants are referenced in the specification.

I suggest simply moving section 9 so that it appears before any of the
defined symbolic constants are first referenced.

- Ralph

At 01:05 AM 5/5/2004 +0200, Erik Guttman wrote:
>Please post discussion of this issue to the mailing list over the next two 
>weeks
>ending May 18, 2004.  In order to accept this issued, we will need a strong WG
>consensus given that this is very late in the process.
>
>Please see http://www.drizzle.org/~aboba/ZEROCONF/issues.html for a list of
>current issues and their status.
>
>[LL60]
>
>Description of Issue:           Forward reference style
>Submitter Name:                         Stuart Cheshire
>Submitter Email Address:        [email protected]
>Date first submitted:           04 May 04
>Reference:
>Comment Type ['t'ech|'e'dit]:   e
>Prio ['S' Must|1 should|2 may]: 1
>Section:                        1.2
>Rationale/Explanation:
>Lengthy Description:
>
>[Stuart]
>
>>    When ready to begin probing, the host should then wait for a random
>>    time interval selected uniformly in the range PROBE_MIN to PROBE_MAX
>>    seconds, and should then send NUM_PROBES probe packets, spaced
>>    randomly, PROBE_MIN to PROBE_MAX seconds apart.
>
>PROBE_MIN and PROBE_MAX suddenly appear, without mention. Can we give
>their values FIRST, so the reader has a clue what we're talking about.
>
>[Erik]
>
>This is standard practice in all RFCs that include constants.  We could
>add text to section 1.2 if you think that this is confusing to
>implementors.
>
>Personally I feel this goes without saying and adding it would only be a
>matter of (questionable) style.
>
>[Stuart]
>
>I disagee.
>
>What is the harm in helping the reader understand the document better?
>
>How can unexplained forward references be good style?
>
>
>Requested Change:
>
>Add to section 1.2
>
>   Constants are introduced in all capital letters.  Their values are
>   given in Section 9.