Subject: [Tools-discuss] Datatracker improvements for testing

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:17:55 +0100

Hi everyone,

I'd like to invite everyone on the tools-discuss list to test the
upcoming datatracker improvements that Russ referred to recently:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg06907.html

Two starting points:

o  The new search page (try searching for "nsis" for a good overview
   of new features):
   http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/

   This page will eventually replace at least three separate search
   interfaces in the current datatracker: /idtracker/, /drafts/, and
   the IESG tracker search page. 

o  New per-draft page:
   http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-csi-sndp-prob/

   Here the goal is again to simplify the system, and replace at 
   least three separate per-draft pages (one under /idtracker/,
   another under /drafts/, and third in the IESG tracker) with one
   page that shows all the information previously found on those
   separate pages (and has "edit" buttons if you're logged in 
   as area director).

As Russ noted, this code is developed by volunteers, so please send
bug reports, enhancement ideas, and other comments to this list, not
the IETF secretariat.

(Note that if you have used this interface earlier, it might be
necessary to click "Reload" to clear old data from the cache.)

Best regards,
Pasi

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From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:38:58 -0600

This is great stuff. These improvements will make life much easier for 
participants, authors, and chairs.

/a

On 1/26/10 13:17, Jan 26, [email-masked] wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Tools-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tools-discuss
>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:19:15 -0600

Hi, Pasi,

Simplification is good...

I noticed a couple of things.

- the draft display that's being used (for example, 
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-csi-sndp-prob/) doesn't include 
the helpful links at the top of the page like 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-mediactrl-mrb-02 - to previous 
versions, to nits, to e-mail addresses for notifications. It also doesn't 
have active hyperlinks. Between these omissions, I'd still be going over to 
the tools version of this page almost every time.

- is it possible to lace the draft information and RFC information (for the 
same draft) a little more tightly? I had clicked on an RFC, which still 
shows tabs for IESG Evaluation Record and IESG Writeup, but these only work 
for the corresponding draft version that became the RFC. Yeah, you could 
tell me that my question is malformed, but I wanted to ask.

You didn't ask for the following kind of input, but - now that I'm seeing 
drafts and RFCs more closely linked on the same page, I'm wondering about 
showing the history of IESG Evaluation Records for RFCs - for example, I was 
looking at one RFC where I can still see the comment (for the corresponding 
draft) "I agree with Cullen's DISCUSS" - but since Cullen's DISCUSS was 
cleared (or it wouldn't have been an RFC), this is a dangling pointer.

That did make me wonder about adding a link for the full history (which does 
show this type of information) - as a WG chair, I'd like to be able to look 
at what got addressed.

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:39:53 +0100

Thanks for your comments, Spencer! More in-line:

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-csi-sndp-prob/) doesn't
> include the helpful links at the top of the page like
> versions, to nits, to e-mail addresses for notifications. It also
> doesn't have active hyperlinks. Between these omissions, I'd still
> be going over to the tools version of this page almost every time.

The nits link is there ("Check nits" inside the box containing state
information), and previous versions/diffs are under the "History" tab.
Earlier version of this interface also had the email link, but that
was so rarely used that it was removed... (but adding it back would be
easy, of course).

For the draft text, the goal is to move to using Henrik's "rfcmarkup"
code eventually (which would get us the hyperlinks), but this requires
Henrik to publish a version under the BSD license (he said over a year
ago that he would be willing to do this, but has been awfully busy
since...:-)

> - is it possible to lace the draft information and RFC information
> (for the same draft) a little more tightly? I had clicked on an RFC,
> which still shows tabs for IESG Evaluation Record and IESG Writeup,
> but these only work for the corresponding draft version that became
> the RFC. Yeah, you could tell me that my question is malformed, but
> I wanted to ask.

A good question, and I'm not sure what exactly the answer should be.

As you noted, the "IESG Evaluation Record" and "IESG Writeup" tabs are
usually disabled for RFCs, but they are relevant when the RFC is
progressed to e.g. Draft Standard without a new internet-draft.  See,
for example:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3848/

In this case, the document has had two separate IESG evaluation
records and writeups: one when the internet-draft was approved, and
one when the RFC was moved to Draft. And it has two state entries in
the database: the internet-draft would be in "RFC Published" state,
but the RFC could be e.g. "In Last Call".

The current datatracker shows these completely separately, too:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/rfc3848/
http://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/draft-newman-esmtpsa/

I guess merging the information somehow would make sense -- however,
I'm not quite sure exactly what the result should look like...

(One problem here is that the tracker database has awfully sketchy
information in some places. For example, the "rfcs" table does not
even contain all RFCs, and the status information (informational/etc.)
is often wrong.  To solve that, I had to add a cron job that downloads
rfc-index.xml from the RFC editor daily; there's a similar script that
downloads the RFC editor queue states. And the database has basically
no information about old versions of internet-drafts (even when they
were published), so that's downloaded from the tools servers. So the
code for merging often incomplete/incorrect information from different
places is already quite complex... I hope the database redesign will
eventually solve some of these problems, but that's some time in the
future.)

> You didn't ask for the following kind of input, but - now that I'm
> seeing drafts and RFCs more closely linked on the same page, I'm
> wondering about showing the history of IESG Evaluation Records for
> RFCs - for example, I was looking at one RFC where I can still see
> the comment (for the corresponding draft) "I agree with Cullen's
> DISCUSS" - but since Cullen's DISCUSS was cleared (or it wouldn't
> have been an RFC), this is a dangling pointer.

Were these DISCUSSes/COMMENTs for the internet-draft, or after the RFC
was already out (and was considered e.g. for Draft Standard)?

> That did make me wonder about adding a link for the full history
> (which does show this type of information) - as a WG chair, I'd like
> to be able to look at what got addressed.

Good idea; including a link to the internet-draft's history 
in the RFC's history tab would be easy (much easier than merging
the information).

Best regards,
Pasi

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:55:03 -0600

Hi, Pasi,

Thanks for the quick feedback!

Re: mailing addresses for the draft - I bet there aren't many people who do 
use this - but as a Gen-ART reviewer, I find it invaluable. Without it, I 
have to figure out who the authors are, and THEN figure out who the chairs 
are, and THEN figure out who the responsible AD is, and THEN figure out who 
the shepherd is (because the shepherd can be "none of the above"). And there 
have been a bunch of times when I've omitted at least one of these groups, 
so (for example) chairs are surprised when ADs ask about Gen-ART review 
comments, etc. We have few enough reviewers that I'd encourage anything that 
makes being a reviewer easier!

Re: hyperlinks in drafts and RFCs - I understand the BSD issue, and if I had 
ideas about scaling Henrik, I would have written an (IPR-laden) draft a long 
time ago. Until the BSD-licensed version happens, would it make sense to 
have a link from what appears now, to the tools version? The links really 
are useful.

Again, as a Gen-ART reviewer, I always click on "plain text" to get a 
version of the draft that I can easily e-mail with comments inline - we'd 
get that from a link to the tools version, too.

Re: merging RFC and draft information - seeing this information on one 
screen was like the invention of fire - I have no idea how it should be 
presented, because I've never thought about how you would (in your own mind) 
merge the two.

Based on what you're saying, just adding tabs that point from the RFC to the 
corresponding drafts would give 80 percent of the benefit with only 20 
percent of the pain. Let's go there first - link, don't merge until people 
have time to think about what that means, corner cases, etc.

Thanks!

Spencer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 2:39 AM
Subject: RE: [Tools-discuss] Datatracker improvements for testing

Best regards,
Pasi

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:27:55 +0100

> Thanks for the quick feedback!

Thank for *your*  quick feedback -- it's very helpful for doing
iterative improvements..:)

> Re: mailing addresses for the draft - I bet there aren't many people
> who do use this - but as a Gen-ART reviewer, I find it
> invaluable. Without it, I have to figure out who the authors are,
> and THEN figure out who the chairs are, and THEN figure out who the
> responsible AD is, and THEN figure out who the shepherd is (because
> the shepherd can be "none of the above"). And there have been a
> bunch of times when I've omitted at least one of these groups, so
> (for example) chairs are surprised when ADs ask about Gen-ART review
> comments, etc. We have few enough reviewers that I'd encourage
> anything that makes being a reviewer easier!

I find those addresses quite useful, too (and regularly use them), but
I've never used the mailto: link on tools.ietf.org HTML draft pages...
And that mailto: link actually does not include the chairs, shepherd
or responsible AD, so it seems it's not quite what you're looking for...

> Re: hyperlinks in drafts and RFCs - I understand the BSD issue, and
> if I had ideas about scaling Henrik, I would have written an
> (IPR-laden) draft a long time ago. Until the BSD-licensed version
> happens, would it make sense to have a link from what appears now,
> to the tools version? The links really are useful.

I agree; we're already linking to the tools PDF version, so linking to
the HTML version, too, could be useful. Will add within couple of weeks.
 
> Again, as a Gen-ART reviewer, I always click on "plain text" to get
> a version of the draft that I can easily e-mail with comments inline
> - we'd get that from a link to the tools version, too.

The link to "plain text" version is already there for internet-drafts
(but not RFCs yet -- will be added soon).
 
> Re: merging RFC and draft information - seeing this information on
> one screen was like the invention of fire - I have no idea how it
> should be presented, because I've never thought about how you would
> (in your own mind) merge the two.
> 
> Based on what you're saying, just adding tabs that point from the
> RFC to the corresponding drafts would give 80 percent of the benefit
> with only 20 percent of the pain. Let's go there first - link, don't
> merge until people have time to think about what that means, corner
> cases, etc.

OK -- will add a link from RFCs (and its history) to the draft
soon (this link is so obvious that I consider this a bug :-)

Best regards,
Pasi

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:09:06 -0600

Hi, Pasi,

Ouch! Thanks for pointing this out to me... my bad!

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[email-masked]>

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:21:42 +0100

Hi Spencer, Pasi,

Additional information on one item below:

> Spencer Dawkins wrote:
..
> or responsible AD, so it seems it's not quite what you're looking for...

The draft aliases currently available on tools.ietf.org have been
enhanced during last autumn, so that the following are now available:

  <draftname>@tools.ietf.org	# Draft authors (for now, could change)
  <draftname>.authors@		# Draft authors
  <draftname>.chairs@		# WG Chairs (if the draft is a WG draft)
  <draftname>.notify@		# The addresses entered into the tracker's
				#   email notification field for the draft
  <draftname>.ad@		# The sponsoring AD, if the draft has gone
				#   to the IESG
  <draftname>.all@		# All of the above, merged into one alias

Regards,

	Henrik

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:46:11 -0600

Henrik,

Thanks for the pointer to ".all". That's actually the most helpful one for 
me, and I've been using the wrong one for a while!

Spencer

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:15:00 -0500

great! I have added this info in the WG chair wiki.
http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/wgchairs/wiki/WikiStart

(ccing wgchairs ML)

Marc.

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:15:36 +0100

Hi Spencer,

> me, and I've been using the wrong one for a while!

It has been mentioned that after some experience with the additional aliases,
we might change the semantics of the 'bare draft name' alias to be the same
as the .all alias, instead of as now be the same as the .authors alias.

I don't know if the time to do that is now.

Best,

	Henrik

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:55:24 -0600

Hi, Henrik,

> I don't know if the time to do that is now.

If the ADs can survive that (could they get MORE e-mail? hardly seems 
possible), I would find that helpful as a WG chair, and more helpful as a 
Gen-ART reviewer.

Speaking only from my own experience, I tend to know who the lead authors 
are in my own working groups, and tend to forget about other authors.

I tend to know who chairs are in my area, and (if it's ever mattered to me) 
I tend to know who the responsible AD is.

I don't tend to know who shepherds are, and once I move outside RAI, I 
usually have to scrape e-mail addresses from various places for authors, 
chairs, ADs and shepherds, because I don't know who they are, and typically 
don't already have their e-mail addresses in my address book.

Thanks!

Spencer

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:12:37 -0500

It seems like the document shepherd should be included somewhere as well.

	Tony Hansen
	[email-masked]

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:24:57 +0100

> It seems like the document shepherd should be included somewhere as well.

The way it's done currently is that the document shepherd will be entered
in the document's email notification list in the database, so will appear
in the .notify and .all entries below.  Once we enhance the database with
specific knowledge of shepherds, I'll be happy to add a specific .shepherd
entry, too.

Best,

	Henrik

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:27:38 -0600

I believe the document shepherd is included as a notification address in the 
ID Tracker (not sure whether this is the secretariat or the AD who actually 
adds the address).

So I assumed that the shepherd is already included in .all - please let us 
know if that's not the case!

Spencer

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:30:53 -0500

Okay, this works for me.

	Tony

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:32:06 +1100

These look fantastic.

My only feedback is that once these are deemed "live" (now?), the various other I-D URLs hosted on tools, datatracker and ietf.org should 301 redirect to them, so there's ONE view of this information, not (seemingly, sometimes) fifteen.

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/