Re: On XML and $EDITORs (Re: Things that used to be clear (was ...)) "Living Documents") side meeting at IETF105.)

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Jul 11, 2019, at 11:20 AM, Julian Reschke <[e-mail]> wrote:
> If one says "normative", it's normative, no?

In terms of process, yes.   But I might refer to it informatively and normatively in the same document, and that could be marked properly in the XML if we cared.   I don’t think it’s very important, but if you add the ability to mark a reference normative, you either have to allow this or forbid it, and if you allow it, I think this is the right way to treat it.   I’d prefer to allow it—I think it’s useful.  The downside is that it requires more care, and that would be a good reason to forbid it. :)

>> It would also be nice if the publication date could default to “today”
>> and if the draft number could be determined automatically based on what
>> is most recent…
> 
> It already does default to "today", unless I'm missing something.

Oh cool.   Either I didn’t think to just leave the date tag empty, as Carsten suggests, or this was added at some point after I started using xml2rfc.   Of course, if the XML is normative, isn’t it the case that the published XML has to have a date tag that contains the publication date?

> Calculating the draft number *could* be done at submission time; I
> wouldn't want to do it always, because then, if the last was "01", the
> generated one will say "02" - even if it never gets submitted.

Sure, but that’s effectively what happens anyway, isn’t it?   The difference is that I might generate several -01s after -01 is published, or I might generate several -02s before -02 is published, depending on my habit.   This would eliminate that variability.   It’s always possible to generate a -02 that’s not the published -02, so I think making this automatic doesn’ t make the situation any worse, and does increase usability.