Re: FIXED: Poll: RFCs with page numbers (pretty please) ? (was: Re: John/rsoc: Re: Page numbers in RFCs questions / preferences)

[Jim Fenton <[e-mail]>]

On 27 Oct 2020, at 21:49, Andrew G. Malis wrote:

> Jim,
>
> Open any recent HTML RFC (such as
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8905.html) and take a look at the 
> frame
> to the right of the text (on a phone browser, the TOC is a button at 
> the
> top of the screen).

Thanks, John and Andy, for pointing that out. That’s what I get for 
(1) using a narrow browser window and (2) looking for the TOC in exactly 
the same place, so I didn’t see the Table of Contents thing in the 
upper right corner.

-Jim

>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 7:57 PM Jim Fenton <[e-mail]> 
> wrote:
>
>> [Yikes, this discussion is getting crossposted everywhere, it seems.
>> I’ll keep it brief]
>>
>> On 27 Oct 2020, at 16:36, David Noveck wrote:
>>
>>> The issue comes up with PDF files.  Currently, you get page numbers
>>> together with a TOC that has no page numbers.  I'm OK with a no-TXT
>>> option
>>> but I have a problem with a not-usefully-printable option for RFCs.
>>
>> When RFC 8689 was about to be published about a year ago, I had a 
>> chat
>> with the staff at the RFC Editor table in Singapore about this. It
>> seemed a little strange to have a table of contents without page
>> numbers, but if some people are reading HTML versions, PDF versions, 
>> and
>> TXT versions, the pagination is different anyway (and nonexistent for
>> HTML) so trying to reference something by page number is problematic.
>> References should be to section numbers, and if sections are so big 
>> that
>> it’s hard to find some text there, the author should really think
>> about structuring the document with smaller subsections.
>>
>> What does seem strange (and maybe it has changed in the past year) is
>> that the plain text and PDF versions have tables of contents, and the
>> html version does not. I would like for the html version to have a 
>> table
>> of contents with links to anchors for each section.
>>
>> -Jim
>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 6:51 PM Phillip Hallam-Baker
>>> <[e-mail]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Whooaah there...
>>>>
>>>> What is the status of this poll? I am all for moving from the
>>>> subjective
>>>> consensus model in which certain parties get a veto because their
>>>> opinions
>>>> are considered weightier than the rest of us. Objective measures of
>>>> consensus are good. But is this an official poll? What does it 
>>>> mean?
>>>>
>>>> But of course, as John K. pointed out, this is not actually an IETF
>>>> process. Only of course it is in every meaningful sense except
>>>> insofar as
>>>> IETF rules of the road apply.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Page numbers is not the hill I would choose to die on here. They
>>>> don't
>>>> work in HTML and the whole point of this process is that the TXT
>>>> documents
>>>> reflect very badly on the IETF as an organization. It spoke of an
>>>> organization that is stuck in the 1960s ranting on about how vinyl 
>>>> is
>>>> better than CD.
>>>>
>>>> There are serious issues with the new format. Not least the fact 
>>>> that
>>>> SVG
>>>> is not actually supported. The supported format is SVG/Tiny which 
>>>> is
>>>> an
>>>> obsolete format originally proposed back in the WAP days as a means
>>>> of
>>>> crippling the spec to fit the capabilities of the devices back 
>>>> before
>>>> Steve
>>>> Jobs showed us an iPhone for the first time. There are no tools 
>>>> that
>>>> produce SVG/Tiny, not even GOAT - I had to modify the source code 
>>>> to
>>>> comply.
>>>>
>>>> I don't mind retooling to support an improved specification. Having
>>>> to
>>>> retool to support an obsolete one is nonsense.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, how about as a compromise, authors can opt to suppress
>>>> generation
>>>> of the TXT version so that the page number issue doesn't come up at
>>>> all?
>>
>>