The Metalink Download Description Format
draft-bryan-metalink-28

I have a number of non-blocking comments: 

1. For the readability of the document it would be useful if all acronyms were expanded at the occurence - IRI, DTD, etc. 

2. section 4.1.1.1 - 'It is advisable that each metalink:file
   element contain a non-empty metalink:description element ...' - it looks like using 'it is RECOMMENDED ... ' is more appropriate

3. Section 4.1.2 - 'All metalink:url elements contained in each metalink:file element SHOULD lead to identical files.' - why SHOULD is used here and the rest of the paragraph and not MUST? 

4. Section 4.2.8.2 - 'In the case of BitTorrent as specified in [BITTORRENT], the value "torrent" is required' - looks like capitalized REQUIRED is more appropriate.

Section 3.2., paragraph 6:
>    Date values SHOULD be as accurate as possible.  For example, it would
>    be generally inappropriate for a publishing system to apply the same
>    timestamp to several Metalink Documents that were published during
>    the course of a single day.

  Can we say a bit more precisely how accurate is considered accurate
  enough?

I agree with Ralph's discuss that the IANA "Operating System Names"
is unlikely to be very useful, since all the most common operating
systems are missing from it...

The list at http://www.iana.org/assignments/operating-system-names was updated recently.  I still don't see any of the recent Windows versions like XP, Vista, 7.

The kind of comments that are coming in indicate to me that this might have benefited going through a working group - at the least, I think it would have attracted more participation in its earlier review.

Section 4.2.4

While a hash and a checksum serve similar purposes, they are not equivalent.  I suggest the
following change:

OLD
   The "metalink:hash" element is a Text construct that conveys a hash,
   also known as a checksum, for a file.
NEW
   The "metalink:hash" element is a Text construct that conveys a 
   cryptographic hash for a file.