Fair comment Tony. I think it was just considered to be too boring and technical to warrant public viewing (it was for a long time public) but I see no problem in reversing that.

But this should also be seen in a wider context: our plan was to wait until we had the DOI ISO-standardised, and then develop a new set of documents based on the standard as a core, and a "User Manual" as supplementary material. This would essentially turn the Handbook etc into two docs. That's still the plan. Although moving at ISO speed :) , it is happening: yesterday the ISO Working Group on DOI approved, bar a few tech details, a final version of the standard for submission to voting, and are also going to work on some FAQS. Given world enough and time, I would expect to see our current handbook and our current FAQS replaced by all this sometime in 2008. All of which is to say, we need to do work on the Handbook etc but I am keeping this to the minimum necessary at present, for that reason and also simple time constraints. (I know there are some who are critical of it as being out of date).

(Managing Agent IDF)

Thanks for that Norman. I would note though that "too boring" is not really a sufficient criterion for removing material from public viewing. By that token the whole corpus of IETF RFCs along with all the W3C Recommendations would be up for closed screening only. (And please don't let anybody dissuade me that these documents are not inherently "boring". ;)

It is good news indeed to hear that final documents for Project 26324 (Information and documentation -- Digital object identifer system) may be ready by 2008. It is not clear, however, what that really means. Does that mean publication of an ISO DIS, or an ISO DIS (Final) in the course of 2008, which given the review times required for these stages could mean publication as an ISO Standard even as late as 2009? I note this passage anyway from the ISO Terms of Reference:

"Publication of ISO 26324:
 
ISO 26324 must be published within 36 months of the project's initial registration in the ISO programme of work.
 
Target date: 2009-08-07 or earlier."

Well, those are dates for the calendar. Meantime even Christmas seems to me to be a long way off. I would therefore hope that something could be achieved ahead of a future 2008/9 time point. And indeed, if the material in the DOI Handbook, Chapter 9 were previously in the public domain maybe a consideration could be given to returning it to public sight. Otherwise, if there are commercial sensitivities involved in the operating procedures then I would really urge that this section be moved out into a separate document because it is compromising the integrity of the rest of the Handbook as a publicly accessible specification for DOI which is currently available.

Ah! Now it seems to be fixed. That's much better. I can see clearly now. All the Handbook. Thanks. :)