[rfc-i] Margins, headers and footers, and the mythical 58 lines

[dev+ietf at seantek.com (Sean Leonard)]

Hello RFC-Interest:

I am researching the margins and pagination controls for headers and 
footers in the RFC series.

It appears that footers and headers are of the form:

3 blank lines
Postel & Reynolds Informational                      [Page 6]
FF CRLF
RFC 2223              Instructions to RFC Authors October 1997
2 blank lines


Is this universally true?

I note that RFC 6949 (and predecessors) say "Each page must be limited 
to 58 lines followed by a form feed on a line by itself." However, I 
looked at a lot of RFCs in the series, and it seems that they have 56 lines:

FF
HEADER
BLANK
BLANK
48 LINES
BLANK
BLANK
BLANK
FOOTER

So, what is up with the 58 lines? Even RFC 2223 has 56 lines per page, 
though it says 58 lines. (Same for RFC 1543 and RFC 1111!)

But RFC 825 (J. Postel, November 1982), does, in fact, have 58 lines on 
page 2, and it says "Each page must be limited to 58 lines followed by a 
form feed on a line by itself."


Furthermore, it appears that there are frequently more than three blank 
lines (more than four CRLFs) prior to the footer, which are usually done 
for widow/orphan control. It also appears that there are (almost?) never 
more than two blank lines following the header. Can anything be inferred 
about text or figures based on these observations, namely: if the footer 
is separated by more than 3 blank lines, then a paragraph ends and a new 
paragraph begins at the page boundary, and a figure has multiple CRLFs 
(i.e., one or more blank lines) as part of the figure? And similarly, if 
there are exactly 3 blank lines before the footer and 2 blank lines 
after the header, that there is no paragraph split in text, and no 
internal blank lines in figures?


Regards,

Sean