Re: [rfc-i] Poll: RFCs with page numbers (pretty please) ?

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 28-Oct-20 06:54, John Scudder wrote:
> As a reminder for those who have lost track, this thread was kicked off by Toerless saying he would like to be able to render his own copies to include a useful table of contents, for his own use, at home, probably with the blinds drawn to keep the world from witnessing his shame. A little while later Henrik said in no uncertain terms that adding the capability to xml2rfc would be trivial, and that he’d be happy to do it, but that he was specifically directed not to do so.

Not speaking for anybody except myself, I'll simply observe that the tools people were asked to go and implement the RFCs that were published after a public comment period (as Robert pointed out), and one of those RFCs specified a txt format without page numbers. So that's what got done. Not everybody agreed with that choice at the time, and evidently not everyone agrees with it now, but it wasn't decided in secret.

> So far, nobody has even attempted to justify this directive, although a zoo of straw men has been paraded through the subsequent follow ups. 

The directive was "please implement the RFCs". If I understand correctly, that was budgetted and paid for. As far as I can see there's nothing in those RFCs that even purports to forbid other formats being generated, but there *is* a rational argument against page numbers that's been made here, and the same argument applies against line numbers. If you want something more precise than section numbers, the only portable one I can envisage is paragraph numbers. That has a good chance of working across all formats.

   Brian
 
> —John
> 
>> On Oct 27, 2020, at 1:42 PM, Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> [External Email. Be cautious of content]
>>
>>
>> You’re perfectly allowed. Use enscript, or whatever pagination tool you want. The issue is not that you aren’t allowed—it’s that if the IETF provides a pagination tool, we will be perceived as having provided page numbers, and those page numbers may then be used when referencing documents. By making you take the step of paginating, we avoid that worry.
>>
>> Of course, if your goal is just to be annoyed at dem kids, please continue… :)
>>
>>>>> On Oct 27, 2020, at 1:37 PM, Randy Bush <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>> The argument that page numbers are harmful for *any* *purpose*
>>>>> *whatever* is not reasonable. ... A table of contents, in short.
>>> <doh>  no can do.  might make document more useful. </snark>
>>> and if you drop it on the floor, you can put it in the card sorter.  oh
>>> wait.  :)
>>> what i find shocking here is the "we know best, and you will not be
>>> allowed attitude," an authoritarianism which seems to have become
>>> more and more popular.
>>> randy, going back under my rock
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