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

[John Scudder <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 26, 2020, at 2:56 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:

As Julian Reschke observed on the rfc-interest list, since the
new RFC format was implemented:

page numbers should not be used to refer to parts of the
RFC, because page breaks vary with output formats

So I can only see confusion if people use page numbers for
any purpose whatever. So it doesn't matter if people want
page numbers; they're now useless. So I won't be answering
a poll, and I don't think the results are interesting.

The argument that page numbers are harmful as a way of referring to a section of the RFC is reasonable.

The argument that page numbers are harmful for *any* *purpose* *whatever* is not reasonable. To offer one glaringly obvious counterexample, people (I, for one) sometimes print RFCs for the purpose of reading them. Sometimes we want to make use of some kind of facility for indexing from a list of headings to facilitate direct access to the right section of the pile of printout. A table of contents, in short. This is literally what tables of contents were invented for. They remain useful for this purpose… unless some bright spark chooses to remove the page numbers from them, because they forgot what tables of contents are FOR.

(Also, I think the use of the ToC for quickly estimating a document’s throw weight is a valid one. I previously suggested associating a BogoPages metric with each non paginated RFC for this purpose.)

—John

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