Subject: [rtcweb] Comments on draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview-05

From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:23:46 +0100

Hi,

  http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview-05 claims that
it is an "overview" in title and abstract, but it also references RFC
2119 and uses RFC 2119 keywords and has normative references making the
role of the document unclear. Either the RFC 2119 reference and keywords
have to be removed, or Abstract and perhaps title have to be changed to
make it clear who or what would conform to this specification.

I understand the Chairs are already aware some of the references need to
be updated. The `[getusermedia]` reference should point to some proper
publication of the W3C, under `http://www.w3.org/TR/` most likely.

There are various parts that have placeholder text, e.g. section 9 has
"<whatever dB metrics makes sense here - most important that we have one
only>" and '<WORKING GROUP DRAFT "MEDIA PROCESSING">', and Appendix A
has 'The draft referred to as "transport and middle boxes" in Section 4
has not been written yet.' That seems to indicate that the draft is not
ready for publication yet.

In section 12 is a typo "ad to" which should probably be "and to".

Also in section 12, "The number of people who have taken part in the
discussions surrounding this draft are too numerous to list". Ordinarily
people would not be acknowledged simply for having taken part in some
discussion surrounding a document, and it's usually not true that there
have been "too many to list"; I think it would be better to remove the
quoted text.

As noted in http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/#Translations the document
should not use "we" as that is hard to translate and usually it's not
very clear who the pronoun refers to (authors, editors, working group,
the IETF at large, or someone else).

There seem to be many phrases used in the document that are not very
suitable for a general audience, examples are "communications event",
"communications partnership", and "a strong changer of the marketplace
of deployment". (Two of the phrases there come from the last paragraph
in 2.3. which as a whole is not very comprehensible and probably needs
to be re-written).

regards,
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

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From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:07:57 +0100

> make it clear who or what would conform to this specification.

The original intent was that an application that claims conformance to 
the RTCWEB specification could specify only that it conforms to this 
document, pulling the normative references in by reference.

It is up to the chairs to determine if this purpose is a) desirable and 
b) achievable.

> publication of the W3C, under `http://www.w3.org/TR/` most likely.

(speaking with W3C WG chair hat on) These documents are not finished.
It is up to the IETF whether it wishes to refer to them as 
work-in-progress or hold publication until publications exist.

> ready for publication yet.

Noted. These are important to get right.

> the IETF at large, or someone else).

Seven occurences found, five of them in appendix A, which the text says 
should be moved to a different document, and one in the change log.
> in 2.3. which as a whole is not very comprehensible and probably needs

While the readers of this document are not a "general" audience, this 
paragraph was not easy to write, and does seem hard to read. Alternative 
suggestions are welcome.