Re: comments on draft-ietf-sming-reqs-02.txt: I18n

[Frank Strauss <strauss@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>]

Hi!

>> > 71: We believe that 4.3.18 should be "nice to have". See also the
>> >     comments in Appendix A.
>> 
>> [Dave] Saying Internationalization would be nice to have seems to be an
>> innocuous change. Any objections?

David> This topic has been raised multiple times in the IETF. Fred Baker made
David> it very clear that documents must be written in English, the language of
David> the IETF. Maybe that will change under the new leadership, but it hasn't
David> changed yet.

David> I strongly disagree with i18nized DESCRIPTIONS, or any other element of
David> the language that could impact the interpretation of the specification. 

David> There should be one and only one language that is the standard for the
David> official specification, and the IETF has declared that English is that
David> language. I have no objection to somebody publishing a translation into
David> other languages, but there should only be one official specification in
David> the one official language, in case translation creates ambiguities.
David> Otherwise interpretation and interoperability suffer.

David, please read carefully what this requirement is about. We
absolutely agree that (a) all the SMIng documents and (b) all
DESCRIPTIONs and other stuff in each and every IETF-defined SMIng
module *MUST* be written in english.

But we don't want to enforce a Frenchman to write his closed MIB
modules for his closed single company in a language he does not even
understand, if the module never gets to an IETF guy's eyes. This would
be narrow-minded and anything else but a flexible design.

 -frank