[rfc-i] Scanning non-ASCII text

[Dave Crocker]

On 9/28/2012 8:25 AM, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> On Sep 28, 2012, at 6:26 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> What I very much would like to see however is the electronic
>> signatures be embedded in the document.
>
> A big -1 to that. They add no value to 99.999% of people reading an
> RFC, and some software will mark RFCs that have inconsequential bits
> flipped as "invalid" or "dangerous" or some such.


The idea that a data integrity check offers no value is a bit at odds 
with common industry views, I would think.  It also confuses 'people' 
with 'software', since people don't process checksums.  They also don't 
process document structure meta-data. Yet we consider it reasonable to 
include that.

The concern that we should protect people from some software that might 
do the wrong thing with a failed check is also an odd approach for a 
standards environment.

If software makes bad decisions with bit-errors, the software needs to 
be fixed.

d/

-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net