Re: Off list request (was: Re: xml and txt submission on web page)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

(sorry folks... didn't mean to bother others with this but
obviously slipped up)
   john


--On Friday, June 15, 2018 15:11 -0400 John C Klensin
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Alexandre,
> 
> In the light of the note Henrik posted after I started to write
> this, the note that follows may be irrelevant, but possibly
> worth reading anyway.
> 
> In your tour of the problems that you have discussed on-list,
> you have identified a problem or three with xml2rdc that
> deserves a trouble report.  I hope for better, but even if the
> only effect of that report is to make sure that bugs of xml2rfc
> v2 do not get carried forward into the production version of
> xml2rfc v3, that would be a positive step.
> 
> I trust you are not surprised that these things, especially the
> file name and "suffix"/"file type" stuff have been noticed by,
> and irritated lots of others.  We have just (eventually)
> learned what the problem is and then decided that remembering
> to not cause it is less trouble than asking for fixes (and
> maybe being necessary anyway). 
> 
> One problem is that such a complaint must be written carefully
> to avoid causing other problems.   For example, if we were to
> complain that, in the <rfc> element,
>    draft-<stuff>-nn
> is accepted but
>    draft-<stuff>-nn.txt
> is not and produces incomprehensible messages, we might get a
> fix that would clearly reject not only the second case but
> names that do no9 contain exactly two digits before the end of
> the string.   That would be a disaster for those of us who use
> assorted naming tricks to keep track of intermediate versions
> that are not intended for posting and that are intended to be
> seen only by the author(s) and a small circle of friends until
> there have been enough iteration in that group to make them fit
> for posting.
> 
> You have also uncovered a great deal of confusion about things
> that may be worth getting documented (or at least flagged).
> For example, when you complained about not being able to submit
> an XML file for posting without a text one, I replied that the
> text one was required.  It was at one point, but I was wrong;
> it seems that the tool will now accept XML and compile it.  I
> make sufficiently many XML mistakes that I haven't had the
> nerve to try that or find out about it.
> 
> Other comments in response to your notes have implied that the
> submission tool requires that the names of the file names that
> are uploaded must match the names that will be used in the
> Internet-Drafts directory.  That isn't true.  For example, if I
> have properly structured files for 
>    draft-ietf-example-example-00.txt    and  
>    draft-ietf-example-example-00.xml
> but keep them in my file system as, e.g.,
> 	examp-example-00.txt   abd
> 	examp-example-00.xml
> the system will upload those files without problems an just
> proceed normally.   This is a big advantage for those who use
> personal file naming conventions (perhaps, as above, for
> sub-version tracking and perhaps just because they are lazy
> about typing) and so on.
> 
> Anyway, I cannot do more with this until mid-next-week, but, it
> you would find it helpful to work with me on a coherent list of
> specific issues (in either code or documentation) rather than
> just making iterative complaints of the IETF list, please get
> back to me.
> 
> best,
>     john
> 
>