Subject: CAP: Item Registration Considered Harmful

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 14:36:07 -0400

The CAP draft defines a process for registering new "items" for CAP. I 
believe this is a bad idea.

CAP seems to have picked up the "item registration" meme from iCalendar, 
which got it from MIME. In MIME, it makes sense (all Content-types, for 
example, are independent); in iCalendar, it's risky (different 
properties can interact); in CAP, it's an out-and-out mistake. CAP is a 
protocol, not a data format; it cannot be defined piecemeal. For that 
reason, protocols need to be updated by the normal RFC process. If 
someone wants to define, say, a new method for CAP, they need to write 
an I-D and get it approved as a standards-track RFC, updating the CAP 
RFC. (This does not mean that they have to reissue an updated CAP RFC; 
they can have a smaller RFC that just defines the new method.)

This is the normal mechanism for extending protocols. We should not be 
coming up with our own mechanism just for CAP.

-- 
/==============================================================\
|John Stracke    | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp.      |"We can't duplicate the bug." "Have you tried|
[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>|the Xerox machine?"                          |
\==============================================================/