CURRENT MEETING REPORT Reported by Robert Enger/Contel MINUTES The NOCtools working group session was held on Wednesday morning, November 1st, during the recent Hawaii IETF meeting. In addition, a joint UserDoc/NOCtools meeting was held that afternoon. Attendance was larger than noted above; a complete attendee list was not available at the time of this writing. A notable absentee was co-chair Bob Stine of Sparta who was not able to attend this meeting. Morning discussions included catalog re-organization and index design. It was suggested that the catalog be restructured, placing the tutorial as an appendix at the end, and adding a table indicating which keywords apply to which tools. Considerable controversy arose over catalog entries which contained multiple commands. The question was "how does one find a command by name, if the the entry containing multiple command names can appear only once in the (alphabetically organized) catalog". The group is reluctant to introduce a page number based index, because of the associated difficulty in making catalog updates. The members agreed to suggest to Bob Stine (the "book boss") that the two entries containing multiple command names be broken down into multiple entries, each containing one command (similar to the rest of the catalog entries). Bob has rejected this suggestion because he feels it will cause too much expansion and redundancy in the catalog. Concurrent with the index design (table concept) was a discussion of the physical limitations of the table. Many of the problems result from the desire to make the document usable in a manual, off-line mode. To this end, it was decided that the table's ultimate horizontal size should be limited to two pages, so that an entire line can be viewed simultaneously on two adjoining pages (eg left and right side of a book). This in turn limits the number of keywords that can be listed in the table. One suggestion from the attendees was to anticipate future space problems by eliminating the "environment" (target hardware/software platform) keywords from the table to conserve space. Since there are currently no space problems it was decided to list the entire set of keywords across the top of the table. During the morning meeting we also made numerous corrections to the text, as well as adding text to improve clarity and ease of use. We also acquired a new catalog entry: HyperMib, a HyperCard based tool allowing one to inspect the text of the MIB specification documentation, as well as a few new keywords. Bob Stine reminds me to point out that, excepting the multiple-command entry suggestion, all other suggestions should now be reflected in the 2 current draft. So, please review the current draft, and feel free to make additional suggestions or corrections. After lunch, the joint UserDoc/NOCtools session was held. Discussion ranged widely from specific suggestions for product improvement to general questions of publicity, technical assistance, and distribution. We were joined by Dave Crocker, NOCtools' area director, and received cameo appearances from other luminaries too. Specific suggestions for NOCtool catalog improvement included: o Continuing the working group beyond publication of the first draft. This would allow the group to: - handle the expected volume of "me too" submissions - formulate written policy for document up-keep - locate an entity capable of assuming the update chores. o It is expected that a second edition of the catalog will be published when the group disbands, probably around June. o Tighten catalog entry format specifications, so that future entries will be submitted in near-perfect form, reducing the work load on the entity assuming update chores. o Add some means of determining the "freshness" of a catalog entry, and consider whether entries should be removed. Suggestions: - Shelf life/expiration date - Date of initial insertion - Date of last update. o The suggestion which received the most support was the one recommending the addition of a "last update" date. o Before public announcement of the first edition, it was recommended that notification be sent to the IETF mailing list. This would provide entry-suppliers with a last opportunity to inspect the document before it goes public. Gary Malkin volunteered to write the statement of work detailing the duties of the entity that assumes catalog update responsibility. General discussions of import to NOCtools concerned the idea of trying to reduce the "administrative" or "procedural" load on working groups that produce documents. One suggestion was to elicit the assistance of professionals in the field, librarians. It was observed that library science is interested in learning how to utilize modern technology, and that perhaps the IETF (UserDoc?) could form a joint-research relationship with one of the schools. This would provide the IETF with valuable technical assistance in the area of document preparation, layout, etc, as well as professional assistance in the area of on-going document up-keep. It was agreed by most of the attendees that the IETF will be faced with more and more "living documents" (those requiring periodic update) as time goes on. Alternatively, it was suggested that the IAB/IETF approach the funding agencies with a request for money to pay for a full time document update and distribution service. On the subject of publicity a number of attendees suggested other groups that should be contacted and notified of the existence of the documents. Conversation then went on to include suggestions for closer working relationships with parallel organizations in the Bitnet and uucp worlds. It is believed that each group has much to offer the others. A mailing list, noctools@merit.edu, has been established for the working group. As usual, requests to join the list should be directed to noctools-request@merit.edu. ATTENDEES Karen Bowers Robert Enger Steven Hunte Gary Malkin Keith McCloghrie Karen Roubicek Mary Stahl