Document vs. Protocol Point of View

notes on RFC3930

I sometimes explain to people what I think of or call "the protocol point of view" or "the protocol designer point of view" but I don't think that's quite what Eastlake had in mind -- still, it's clearly related

I don't think you can get away from the protocol point of view. Fundamentally, you need to view communication as a protocol at some point in the stack before you can start exchanging things which you can view as documents.

Still, a protocol benefits (implementability and interoperability) from having either a clear document model, or a clear other model even if it's not what Eastlake calls "document". A protocol defined for communication in a random unmodelled way would still work in theory but difficult for people to grasp...

"The protocol point of view can come close to encompassing the document point of view as a limiting case." --> Yes, and the document point of view is only one such limited case. Similarly, a document model is only one model that a protocol might have in order to be more clearly grasped and implemented.