Re: URLs for RFCs and more (sigh!) on HTML RFCs

[Jerry Peek <[e-mail]>]

On Feb 1, 19:30, "James E. [Jed] Donnelley" wrote:
} I just argue that by providing the opportunity to have an:
} 
} http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1714.html
} 
} we add some communication value at negligible
} cost.  The value we add is ease of including cross
} references in the RFC itself and the ability to
} include easily browsable graphics.

One easy thing to do, for a start, is to make that URL a *navigation*
document that points to *instances of* the RFC.  Also, if an RFC needed
to be updated, the navigation document could be modified to point to
the later version, as well.  Maintaining a navigation document is easy,
much easier than converting the whole RFC text to HTML.

For example, rfc1714.html could point to:

- the ftp archives (in this example, rfc1714.txt and rfc1714.ps)

- if RFC 1714 is updated later, rfc1714.html could be modified to
  have a link to the later version -- for instance, rfc4321.html

- related RFCs.  For example, the main MIME RFCs could have
  pointers to RFCs for MIME content-subtypes.

This would make life a lot easier for casual RFC users, like me,
who don't know what the latest versions are.

The next step might be a higher-level navigation document --
an HTML document that gave pointers to the RFCs on a particular
topic.  For instance, mime.html could point to MIME RFCs:
rfc1521.html, rfc1522.html, etc.  A higher-level navigation
document like email.html could point to mime.html, smtp.html, etc.

I'm just joining this discussion.  If someone else has brought this
up already, oops...
--
Jerry Peek -- Manager, Online Information Services
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.; 103A Morris St.; Sebastopol, CA 95472 USA
Online info: http://www.ora.com, gopher.ora.com, email [e-mail].
Me: [e-mail]; [phone], [phone], fax [phone]