[rfc-i] [IAB] draft-iab-xml2rfc-03, "2.19 <displayreference> "

[paul.hoffman at vpnc.org (Paul Hoffman)]

On 2 Mar 2016, at 7:42, Joe Hildebrand (jhildebr) wrote:

> It doesn't sound like you're strongly in favor of keeping this 
> functionality.  Are there others who think it's more important than 
> this?

I think the functionality of <displayreference> is extremely important 
for RFC readability. From the v3 doc:
    This element gives a mapping between the anchor of a reference and a
    name that will be displayed instead.  This allows authors to display
    more mnemonic anchor names for automatically-included references.
    The mapping in this element only applies to <xref> elements whose
    format is "default".

When I was editing the IKEv2 specs, which had a zillion references to 
older RFCs, using descriptive names in the references helped 
implementers understand what they were reading. I have been told by 
other RFC authors that it has been useful to them as well.

I understand that some names might not be useable as "to" references 
because the allowed format for those references is limited; I don't 
think that's a good enough reason to get rid of the functionality. If 
some people can't make he "to" references exactly what they want, that's 
a limitation we should live with.

I'm fine with the idea that the prep tool will remove <displayreference> 
from the prepped XML if we can do so.

--Paul Hoffman