[UA-discuss] Proposal: Handling Numbering of the UASG Documents

[Don Hollander]

Thanks for comments.  Here’s my proposal

Document Naming and Storage Conventions
From time to time the UASG will review and revise documents.   The UASG’s naming and storage policy for the documents will be:


  *   Document Number (e.g. UASG000) – this will be maintained as a consistent reference name for a document
  *   Document Revision – (e.g. UASG000 – 2019-01-25) This will be based on the publication date and represented in the file name as yyyy-mm-dd.  It will also be included within the document.
  *   Document Link – (e.g. English https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/UASG-000-Inventory-of-Material.pdf ) This will be based on the language of the document and is what’s published on the UASG.Tech website and will retrieve the latest official version of the document.
  *   Archives: The UASG.tech website will include a repository of deprecated versions of documents that will be stored and displayed based on its file name (which will include the published date)
  *   Revision Details: For most documents we will maintain a table at the end showing a summary of revisions.  Where a document is used a brochure, this will not be done.


From: UA-discuss <ua-discuss-bounces at icann.org> On Behalf Of Asmus Freytag (c)
Sent: Wednesday, 9 January 2019 2:09 PM
To: Mike Hemp <mikehamp1971 at mail.com>
Cc: ua-discuss at icann.org
Subject: Re: [UA-discuss] Proposal: Handling Numbering of the UASG Documents

On 1/8/2019 3:58 PM, Mike Hemp wrote:
For the god sake do not make it complicated for people. RFC/IETF is only for highly technical community not for website and general application developers. Keep complications behind and keep the things simple for general audience. UASG is for everyone and must be understood very easily. Asmus idea is great. Get rid of numbers please. People who make money from technical stuff make issues complicated and would come up with such ideas.

W3C manages without numbers.

But that requires short names like "CSS" or "HTML" or something.

Having to always cite documents by a full title like "email address internationalization EAI a technical_overview" gets pretty old.  However, changing the title around a bit to something like EAI Overview: Email Address Internationalization (EAI), would allow "EAI Oveview" or "UASG EAI Overview" as shorthand, which arguably would be more self-explanatory than UASG 02.

A./

Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2019 at 3:01 AM
From: "Asmus Freytag" <asmusf at ix.netcom.com><mailto:asmusf at ix.netcom.com>
To: ua-discuss at icann.org<mailto:ua-discuss at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-discuss] Proposal: Handling Numbering of the UASG Documents

For comparison, the Unicode Standard has the model where a link generally would get you the latest version of a document, but each document contains a header with a link to the previous revision of the document.

That way, if you want to point people to the latest version of a document you can use an "evergreen" link, but if you need to be sure that the link goes to a specific version, there's that option as well.

http://uasg.tech/document/uasg012/email_address_internationalization_EAI_a_technical_overview/
or
http://uasg.tech/document/uasg012/email_address_internationalization_EAI_a_technical_overview/latest

would get the latest version and

http://uasg.tech/document/uasg012/email_address_internationalization_EAI_a_technical_overview/2018-05-12/

would be a specific version. Each version remaining unaltered once posted.

A./


On 1/8/2019 12:54 PM, Jim DeLaHunt wrote:
UA Colleagues:

I think the problem Michael points out is a real one, and worthy of attention.

On 2019-01-08 07:03, Michael Casadevall wrote:
So currently, the UASG publishes various documents such as UASG 0005 and
0007 and occasionally updates these documents to reflect best current
practices. For example, the UA Quick Guide was on Version 9 before it
was removed for revision.

One thing I'm concerned on is that it's not clear that a document has
been updated, nor what has changed from version to version. Furthermore,
when dealing with old discussions, a document may have changed from a
message or posted....
Michael proposes one alternative,
…to change the numbering and management of UASG documentation
to model it around the RFC/IETF where a document is static once
published (with errata linked), and is obsoleted/superseded by future
documents.…

Another alternative is to keep the document number unchanged, but to have a clearly-defined revision date for each version of a document, and to always cite a revision date along with the document number. So, we would say "UASG012 Email Address Internationalization (EAI): A Technical Overview (v 2018-05-12)" instead of "UASG012" or "Email Address Internationalization (EAI): A Technical Overview".

Whichever we do, I believe we should set editorial standards that each document has a) document title, b) UASG number, and c) revision date clearly on the front cover and in the file name of each document issued. Looking through some existing documents, we seem to be inconsistent about this. It makes documents harder to find and harder to cite.

I believe we should also define standard, persistent URLs for each document, something like:

http://uasg.tech/document/uasg012/email_address_internationalization_EAI_a_technical_overview/2018-05-12/

and ensure that visiting such a URL with a web browser returns either the document file itself, or a page describing the document and allowing one to download it.  I find it hard to put links to UASG documents into presentations, because it's difficult to figure out which URL to use, and how much to trust it to stay usable over time.

Best regard,
     —Jim DeLaHunt, Vancouver, Canada





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