Subject: Re: Acronyms

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 17:39:47 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>

> ...
> Guess I'm not the only one who finds it annoying to read a draft title 
> which is chock full of acronyms, and then an abstract which says the same 
> thing, with the same acronyms... If I can't determine what the author is 
> talking about from the announcement that gets sent to ietf-announce, 
> there's a good chance I won't read the draft and make comments.
>
> I think this should go beyond RFCs, and perhaps be added to the Guidelines 
> for Authors of Drafts.

I disagree.  Becaause there are too many drafts to read, every good
filter is valuable.  If the author doesn't know enough to use acronyms
in the title properly, then chances are the draft itself won't be
readable for additional reasons.  Unreadable drafts and RFCs are less
likely to be widely implemented.  Even when they are widely implemented,
life is too short.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 02:58:03 -0400

> likely to be widely implemented.  Even when they are widely implemented,

Unfortunately, I know of at least one misguided soul who tried to implement RFC1097,
but couldn't figure out how to encode the option byte.  I'm still waiting
for somebody to tell me that RFC1098 was an even more subtle joke. ;)

The problem starts when something DOES get implemented - at that point,
those of us with clues need to be able to do the following:

a) Figure out what the chapter-and-verse actually says.
b) Cite it to the offender.

The last thing we need is to be encouraging unclear writing.  I've still
got a quarter century or more till retirement - if I'm going to be citing
chapter and verse for another 25 years, I'd like it to be *understandable*
chapter and verse, thank you. ;)

				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech