Is something wrong with the I-D directories?

Paul Robinson <paul@tdr.com> Sun, 03 March 1996 09:45 UTC

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From: Paul Robinson <paul@tdr.com>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc. Silver Spring, MD USA
To: ietf@CNRI.Reston.VA.US
Subject: Is something wrong with the I-D directories?
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From: Paul Robinson <paul@TDR.COM>
To: Ietf@cnri.reston.va.us

Recently, I saw an announcement about an Internet Draft regarding 
enriched text:

       Title     : The text/enriched MIME Content-type                     
       Author(s) : P. Resnick, A. Walker
       Filename  : draft-resnick-text-enriched-02.txt
       Pages     : 14
       Date      : 01/04/1996

   MIME [RFC-1521] defines a format and general framework for the 
   representation of a wide variety of data types in Internet mail.
   This document defines one particular type of MIME data, the 
   text/enriched MIME type. 

I decided to go take a look at this file, so I ftp'd over to 
ds.internic.net, and saw the following:

  Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
  Logged into ds.internic.net.
  NcFTP 1.8.6 (Octboer 30, 1994) by Mike Gleason, NCEMRSoft.
  Tip: You can get the newest version of NcFTP from cse.unl.edu, in the
       /pub/mgleason/ncftp directory, AFTER business hours.
  ds.internic.net:/
  (Mail) ncftp>cd internet-drafts

I couldn't remember the exact name, so I decided to look it up via a 
wild-card search:

  ds.internic.net:/internet-drafts
  (Mail) ncftp>dir *text*.txt
   1853 Sep 27  1993 draft-ietf-822ext-text-enriched-02.txt
    148 Feb  8 04:38 draft-ietf-asid-name-context-00.txt
    666 Apr 22  1995 draft-ohta-text-encoding-01.txt
  37449 Feb 24 07:14 draft-palme-text-html-02.txt
  20792 Dec 28 01:12 draft-palme-text-html-issues-00.txt
   2262 Feb 20 08:24 draft-resnick-text-enriched-03.txt

A message with a size of "148" or "666" usually means it's been deleted, 
with no replacement.  A size of around 2,000 usually means it's been 
issued as an RFC.  So I decided to see what had happened, and look at it:


  ds.internic.net:/internet-drafts
  (Mail) ncftp>get draft-resnick-text-enriched-03.txt -

  A new Request for Comments is now available in online RFC libraries.


        RFC 1898:

        Title:      CyberCash Credit Card Protocol Version 0.8
        Author:     D. Eastlake 3rd, B. Boesch, S. Crocker & M. Yesil
        Date:       February 1996
        Mailbox:    dee@cybercash.com, boesch@cybercash.com,
                    crocker@cybercash.com, magdalen@cybercash.com
        Pages:      52
        Characters: 113,633
        Updates/Obsoletes:  none

        URL:        ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1898.txt


  CyberCash is developing a general payments system for use over the
  Internet.  The structure and communications protocols of version 0.8
  are described.  This version includes credit card payments only.
  Additional capabilities are planned for future versions. 

  [Extraneous material deleted]

So it looks like a draft on one subject has been erroneously replaced 
with an entirely different file.  I wonder how often this occurs?

 
Paul Robinson
General Manager
Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc.
---
Among Other things, we sell and service ideas.  Call 1-800-TDARCOS from 
anywhere in North America if you are interested in buying an idea to solve 
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