Hello Rob,
Many thanks for the pointer to RFC 7322. I saw the discussion mentioning
the Style Guide, but wasn't aware of the fact that this is an RFC.
Regarding "that policy already belongs to the RFC Editor", it should be
very clear from RFC 9280 that the RFC Editor function is performed by a
variety of entities, and that policy definition is the sole
responsibility of the RSWG (us) and the RSAB and not any other entity
such as the RPC or the RSCE. So the only way (in the current Version 3
of the RFC Editor Model) to leave that to the RSCE/RPC would be to say
that the fact that RFCs are written in English in an implementation detail.
As you mention, RFC 7322 contains what I (and hopefully most of us)
would see as details, such as the choice of American or British
spelling, or details about quotes, commas, and spaces. I see no problems
with leaving these as details.
But what variants of English to allow is a different issue from the
fundamental issue that RFCs are written in English, not in French or
Russian (which can happen with ISO documents) or some other language. So
we would make sure it gets covered in an RSWG document, and the document
at hand is the most obvious place.
Saying that RFCs are in English will also make it easier to understand
the following sentence in the current draft:
"The policy for the RFC Series is that all displayable text is allowed
as long as the reader of an RFC can interpret that text."
For people who's daily life in 99.9 or more English, that sentence may
just read fine. But for people who live and work with other languages,
too, there's very clearly the feeling that something is missing. So I
propose something along the lines of:
"RFCs are published in English, see [RFC 7322 for details. All
displayable text is allowed as long as a reader familiar with English
can interpret that text."
Regards, Martin.
On 2025-10-29 11:33, Rob Sayre wrote:
Hi,
Content, major: The draft needs to say that RFCs are written
(mainly/mostly) in English.
I know this was discussed, but I haven't seen the main argument, namely
that we define
policy and that this is policy. And if this isn't policy, then nothing
in this draft is.
The WG earlier decided that that policy already belongs to the RFC
Editor, and is already
reflected in their Style Guide. Some of the concern, which I agree with,
is "what is English?"
and whether trying to define that anywhere benefits anyone.
This one is covered in RFC 7322.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7322#section-3.1
I agree that "English" cannot be usefully defined. That one only covers
"color" vs "colour" etc. Just don't mix it up. That is annoying.
thanks,
Rob
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