specific questions about RFC publication and I-Ds

Pete Loshin <pete@loshin.com> Wed, 27 September 2000 22:20 UTC

Message-Id: <4.1.20000927174603.0401f100@pop.ne.mediaone.net>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 18:01:07 -0400
To: ietf@ietf.org
From: Pete Loshin <pete@loshin.com>
Subject: specific questions about RFC publication and I-Ds
In-Reply-To: <200009272030.QAA23942@astro.cs.utk.edu>
References: <Your message of "Wed, 27 Sep 2000 13:04:32 PDT." <030401c028be$280b4b60$0ab344ab@spandex>
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OK, I've got some very specific questions about RFCs and I-Ds and the RFC
Editor queue. The IESG announces via mailing list when a document or
protocol action is being taken; as far as I can tell this always means that
an I-D has been approved for publication as an RFC and that I-D is then
released to the RFC Editor to get an RFC number and be published.

Questions:

1. Does the RFC Editor make any changes to the I-D other than changing
internal references to the document from the I-D identifier to the RFC
number, and changes specified by the IESG? More specifically, does the RFC
Editor have the option of doing things like fixing spelling and grammer
errors (if any)?

2. The RFC Editor queue (http://www.rfc-editor.org/queue.html) lists
various documents along with information about where they stand in the
process. The first entry in the queue this afternoon was this:

----start excerpt from RFC Editor's queue----

----------------------------------------
IETF STANDARDS TRACK (by date received)
----------------------------------------

1999/09/16     draft-ietf-mpls-arch-07.txt
REF            draft-ietf-mpls-atm-04.txt
               draft-ietf-mpls-bgp4-mpls-04.txt
               draft-ietf-mpls-cr-ldp-04.txt
               draft-ietf-mpls-framework-05.txt
               draft-ietf-mpls-fr-06.txt
               draft-ietf-mpls-ldp-10.txt
               draft-ietf-mpls-rsvp-lsp-tunnel-06.txt
               draft-ietf-mpls-label-encaps-08.txt
E. Rosen, A. Viswanathan, R. Callon
Multiprotocol Label Switching Architecture

----end excerpt from RFC Editor's queue----

The "REF" indicates (according to the same page) that "REF=holding for
normative reference (followed by ID string of referenced document)."

Does this particular entry mean <draft-ietf-mpls-arch-07.txt> is being held
for normative reference to the I-Ds listed below it, or that all those I-Ds
are being held for normative references?

3. Assuming that the entry above indicates that the first I-D (in this
case, <draft-ietf-mpls-arch-07.txt>) is being held until the other RFCs
become RFCs as well, doesn't this mean that it might be years before an
approved I-D would ever be published as an RFC?


Thanks!
-pl


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specific questions about RFC publication and I-Ds Pete Loshin
Re: specific questions about RFC publication and … Eric Rosen