TRP Messaging Service Spec status

[Joseph Baran <joebaran@extol.com>]

To the QR team:

I participated in the TRP team conference call this morning.

The purpose of the conference call was to go over all of the previously 
posted comments to the Messaging Service spec which were listed as 
"category 2 or 3" in their comment list. (Category 1 consists of 
"non-controversial" editorial corrections such as obvious typos etc., which 
were implicitly accepted; 2 and 3 are "minor" and "major" technical 
issues).

Before the actual comment review work started, I had the opportunity to ask 
team leader Rik Drummond about his recent posting of the current spec to 
the Steering Committee list with a note attached asking for the QR team to 
comment. He confirmed that the purpose of his posting was simply to give us 
a "heads up" in response to Dick's request at the Steering Committee 
meetings in San Jose.  The published TRP work plan shows our formal review 
period for this document starting next Monday (Sept. 4), and this date 
still stands as their goal. There will be another posting to the Steering 
Committee list as the formal "hand-off" for the QR review.

The detailed comment review was mostly accomplished over a period of over 2 
hours. By the end of the call, there were still several comments which had 
not yet been discussed, and there were a few comments the resolution of 
which could not be agreed upon; these were recorded as still "pending 
resolution".  The TRP team has a regularly scheduled conference call on 
Thursday, during which they expect to resolve the remainder of the 
comments.

There will be a revision of the document posted which will include the 
accepted changes.

They are also attempting to re-format the document into a new "ietf-like" 
format (I presume there is a new official template for this?), although it 
was reported that a preliminary pass at the re-formatting suggested that 
there may be some technical difficulties with it. The point was made that 
the inclusion of the agreed-upon changes is the primary purpose of the next 
revision; the reformatting will be done only if time allows.

I will continue to monitor the TRP list and report back to this team on the 
progress of the Messaging Service spec.

Joe Baran